


Soul Power

by theAlmostPorcupine



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Frisk (Undertale), Aliens, Determination (Undertale), F/M, Female Frisk (Undertale), Multi, Not a Crossover, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Shapeshifting, Soul Magic, color-coded magic, even though I've never seen Power Rangers, loosely inspired by Power Rangers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theAlmostPorcupine/pseuds/theAlmostPorcupine
Summary: When Frisk climbed Mount Ebott, she was very determined. But why? Why was Frisk so determined to climb a mountain from which, rumor had it, no one ever returned?Why, to find a being with a white soul, of course, just like the scientists working with Frisk’s secretive military unit predicted would be living atop it. A White Soul was needed to complete the team tasked with saving all of time and space from an irresponsible group of shape-shifting extraterrestrial scientists, who had come to the planet to research M-waves (or “magic,” as Frisk’s new monster friends called it).What no one could have predicted was that having a white soul was not a human trait, but a trait that belonged only to an Earthling race long believed to be nothing more than myths and legends: the monsters. Nor could anyone have predicted that the emergence of monsters would return magic to the world, forcing Frisk to deal with the temptations and dangers associated with time travel, and perhaps, misplacing the trust that her monster crush places in her by becoming the force to end all of time and space in the aliens’ stead.
Relationships: Frisk/Sans (Undertale), OC/OC
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

Sunset. Frisk stared off the mountain, calculating to herself as the monsters spoke among themselves and Papyrus, apparently, became the ambassador. Half a day’s hike down to her rental car, another half-day’s drive to the closest town, and only about one hour to reach the airport. Even if she could make it, she’d have to leave now to return the car, and first-

“It seems that everyone else is quite eager to set off.” Toriel had been watching their friends race down the path, but she turned toward Frisk. “Frisk, you came from this world, right? So you must have a place to return to, do you not? What will you do now?"

Giving a distracted nod, so small it may not have been perceptible, Frisk said, “I’ve got places to go.”

Places to go, and not enough time to make the flight. But she had to make it. She was determined.

“Ah…. I see…. Well, I hope that I am not keeping you.” Toriel took a few steps.

It was as though someone had flipped a switch inside Frisk’s brain: she’d been too focused on how to catch her flight to realize just how many of their friends had left, but now it hit her that Toriel was about to leave her alone.

“Frisk, see you around.” Toriel walked away.

“Yeah,” Frisk whispered. “See ya.”

Frisk frowned at the sunset. She couldn’t afford to miss that flight, and even worse, she couldn’t go back without one of the monsters at her side. But it wasn’t as though she could force anyone along, and it wasn’t as though her military unit wasn’t some big secret to the general populace – human, and Frisk was sure, monsters. Was it worth it to turn back time? To start from the ruins again and try for a record time through King Asgore’s castle?

No. How could she do that to Sans, just so she wouldn’t have to miss a flight? But if the worst happened…. Well, she’d only been able to reset in the Underground. If she lost that ability and the worst happened, everyone was dead.

“Sans, forgive me for this!”

_R E S E T_

As usual, Flowey was waiting for Frisk when she fell into flower patch beneath the hole into the Underground. “What’s the big idea?” he asked. “Monsters were free, and you had to go and reset? Don’t get me wrong – I still can’t feel anything for them, but having to watch you go through the same sickeningly-sick motions to befriend them yet _again_ , I don’t think I can handle that anymore.”

“Asriel-”

“Don’t _Asriel_ me. I’m not him anymore. Don’t you understand? _Asriel_ was that crybaby of a prince, and me, I’m a soulless thing that wants something new. Something that’s not watching the same two days over and over. Get your monsters out of here. Just let time move forward already, will you?” He bent down, as though to burrow himself into the ground.

“I will! But I need a favor from you.”

Flowey paused. “A favor from me? Alright, I’ll humor you, but you’ve got to promise me that this is the last time you reset.”

Bending to Flowey’s level, Frisk frowned. “The resets aren’t going to stop until we prevent the end of the universe and the deaths of you, me, and everyone else in the universe. I know that’s not something you want to happen – the desire to live is something I know you still feel, Flowey – so I can’t promise there won’t be any more resets, but I can tell you that what I’m asking of you is going to cut down on the chances of me having to reset again.”

“So what is this favor?”

“I need some extra time out on the surface to prevent the end of the universe, so I need you to break the barrier sooner than you did last time. I don’t know how long it will take, but I need you to wait for me there.”

Flowey eyed her. “This idea of yours had better not be too boring.”

After Flowey dove into the soil a moment later, Frisk frowned at the spot where he’d disappeared. She knew that Sans had been hurt by all the resets in the Underground, but she hadn’t known that they could hurt Flowey too. She’d always thought they were a source of amusement for him.

She would just have to make sure that things turned out right this time – that monsters still got out of the Underground, and that she and Undyne, or whichever other monster came to help, returned to her unit in time to save everything. With new determination, Frisk continued through the cavern and met up with Toriel, as usual. She made her way through the Ruins, taking only the items she thought she would need, and avoiding encounters when she could.

When Frisk got to Toriel’s home, she climbed into the twin-sized bed with a piece of monster candy in her mouth. Truthfully, she was as exhausted as always after her long hike up the mountain, the tough fall Underground, and the trek to Toriel’s, but she had to free the monsters in enough time to catch her flight this time. Thankfully, the non-licorice-flavored sweethelped her stay awake as she feigned sleep through Toriel’s setting down a piece of butterscotch-cinnamon pie for her and tip-toeing back out of the room. Frisk lay there a moment later to be sure Toriel had really left before she put the pie into her inventory in case she needed it for Asgore. 

The lights were out, all except a sliver that shone under the door in Toriel’s room. Frisk sneaked into the kitchen, where she left a note on the table, and crept through the basement. 

Was it just her, or was the forest near Snowdin chillier than she remembered? It could have been the lack of Sans to greet her. He wasn’t around to sneak up on her for a prank, none of the puzzles were activated, and the dogs weren’t at their stations either. Even the local teenagers seemed to have left for the night. 

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? A lack of obstacles for a speed run? 

“Don’t think of them like that. They’re not obstacles – they’re people. They’re your friends, and you know you want just as much for them to be free as you do for them to be alive.” The thought of seeing her friends alive and enjoying the surface filled her with determination. Still, if she wanted them to live long enough to enjoy the surface, she had to catch that flight with a monster in tow, so she wrapped her arms around herself and walked a little faster.

By this point, she’d reached the rock formation that Papyrus had painted to look like a bridge, and she knew it wasn’t much further until she reached Snowdin. She walked even more quickly.

She walked a little too quickly: her foot hit a patch of ice and she slipped off under the rope and down into the chasm below. Splat!

_L O A D_

Here she was again, in front of the bridge formation. This time, she crossed the bridge more slowly, staring down at her feet for any sign of ice. Maybe she took the bridge a little too slowly: her eyes drooped, and they failed to inform her of the ice. Again, she fell into the chasm.

_L O A D_

“Is this what I get for not stopping to sleep in the Ruins?” Frisk grit her teeth. Tired or not, she had to keep going. As she crossed the bridge, she kept one hand on the rope on either side.

Splat! She fell onto her butt, but she was still on the rock formation. Once she’d gotten to her feet, she was able to cross the chasm and  continue into Snowdin without so much as stumbling into a snow poff.

Frisk was yawning by the time she passed Snowdin’s shop. As she rubbed at one of her eyes, she peeked around Snowdin with the other. The sight of such a cute town still filled her with determination, but it was clear now – if she was going to get past all the obstacles ahead, she was going to need rest. Maybe she could stay at the inn? All the other times she’d stayed there, she’d felt as though she’d gotten a full night’s sleep in only two minutes. If there was some sort of magic responsible for a rest there, it was perfect for a speed run. If not, at least she’d already gotten past the sentry and could start her morning in Waterfall instead, and she would never,  _never_ stop trying to get monsters out of the Underground until she got the timing she needed.

She reached into her pocket. She had six gold from the Ruins. She groaned. “Never mind. Not a problem. If I really need to stay in the inn, I’ll just have to ask for a favor.”

Despite Frisk’s lack of funds, she stepped into the inn anyway. The innkeeper bunny was busy wiping down the reception counter. “I’m sorry, hon. We just filled our last vacancy.  But if you need a place to stay, you could try that big house at the edge of town. Two skeletons live there, and one of them always seems to be awake.”

Frisk’s face heated up. Did the innkeeper just suggest that she stay with Papyrus and…  _Sans?_ “Yeah, I’ll try there. Thank you.”

When Frisk closed the inn’s door behind herself, she stood stiff. Could she really ask to spend a night in Sans’s house? “It’s just one night, and it’s only to save the world. It doesn’t mean anything. Besides, if anyone can get me to the castle quickly in the morning, it will be Sans.”

Frisk crunched forward a step. Then another. By the time she was on the skeleton s’ porch, she was sure her face was the color of a tomato, and not just because it was freezing in this part of the cavern. “Sans!” She pounded on the door. “Sans, I hate to show up out of nowhere like this, but this is an emergency! Are you home?”

The door swung in. Inside stood Sans in a fuzzy blue bathrobe and his usual pink slippers. “uh, hey, human…. can i help you?”

Drifting snowflakes landed in Frisk’s hair, and now that she and Sans were standing awkwardly in the doorway, her fingers started twisting in her sweater. Had she always been this nervous around him?

“SANS, WHO’S AT THE DOOR? IS IT SOMEONE I KNOW?” Papyrus opened the door to his room and jogged down the stairs. “OH, HELLO PERSON WHO LOOKS FAMILIAR, BUT WHOSE MEMORY IS SO SLIPPERY THAT IT EVADES EVEN THE GREAT PAPYRUS. MOMENTARILY, OF COURSE. I’M SURE I AM ABOUT TO REMEMBER YOU.”

Sans scrunched up his eyes. “you do look familiar, but it’s not possible that i’ve met you before. how did you know my name?" 

Why did she think this was a good idea again? Just how tired was she? Regardless, she was here, and Sans deserved an explanation. Or what of an explanation she was permitted to give him. “My name is Frisk, and I’m the ultimate fart master.”

It wasn’t the first time that Frisk had given him the code word he gave to time travelers, but he’d never been silent so long any of the other times she’d done it. Then again, this was the first time that, from his point of view, she’d given him his code word immediately on his meeting her for the first time. All the other times, he must have had some inkling that something was off about her, at least enough of an inkling for him to laugh at his own prank.

Finally, Sans blinked and looked her over.  “wow, kid. you look like you’ve had a rough _time_ getting here. you say there’s an emergency?”

With a soft chuckle, Frisk put her hand on the door frame. “The barrier has to go first thing tomorrow morning, and I need your help to get the entire Underground-”

“the barrier, huh? hate to _break_ it to you, but the king will be there, and i can’t exactly take you to see him.”

“Because you promised you’d protect any human who leaves the Ruins?” Frisk met Sans’s eye lights. “Tell Asgore not to fight me. You and Papyrus both, and anyone else you even think might stick up for a human who knows another way to let monsters see the surface. Asgore will listen to you. All we have to do is get everyone together, and there will be someone there who will be able to break the barrier. Nobody dies, and we all go free.”

“DID YOU JUST SAY _HUMAN_?” Papyrus bounded to the open door. “HAVE YOU FOUND A HUMAN? WOWIE! YOU MUST BE OVERWHELMED WITH THE TASK OF HANDING SUCH A POWERFUL SOUL OVER TO UNDYNE, BUT FEAR NOT, FOR I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL HELP YOU OUT. FOR YOU SEE, I KNOW UNDYNE. I’LL JUST CALL-”

__

“No! Take me directly to Asgore. I’d love to meet Undyne, but this is important. Besides, isn’t it better if the Great Papyrus show Asgore the human he caught himself?”

__

P apyrus furrowed the bone above his eye sockets. “THE HUMAN I CAUGHT MYSELF. WAIT A MINUTE. ARE YOU A HUMAN?”

__

A cold draft pressed into Frisk’s sweater, and she shivered. “Yeah, I’m human. Just wait a bit before telling Undyne about me please. She’ll like me better  _after_ monsters are free tomorrow, and I’m going to need our first meeting to be perfect. I’m going to need to ask her to come with me to save the world, and you, I’m sure she’ll need a trusted member of the royal guard making sure that humans and monsters are getting along while she’s gone, even if this member of the royal guard is newly installed.”

__

“THAT’S A GOOD IDEA.” Despite his words, Papyrus’s smile had dropped. “IT’S ALMOST AS GOOD OF A PLAN AS I COULD HAVE COME UP WITH. BUT STILL, GOING OVER UNDYNE’S HEAD TO TAKE YOU DIRECTLY TO THE KING, I DON’T THINK SHE’LL BE HAPPY ABOUT THAT.”

__

Sans placed his hand on his brother’s arm.  “ aw, paps. we all know you were _bone_ to be in the royal guard-”

__

Papyrus groaned. “SANS, DO YOU HAVE TO TELL YOUR AWFUL PUNS IN FRONT OF THE HUMAN? YOU’LL INFECT OUR NEW FRIEND WITH YOUR ROTTEN HUMOR.”

__

“what? afraid i might tickle frisk’s funny bone?” Sans winked at Frisk.

__

Frisk giggled.

__

“all i’m sayin’, bro, is that we know you were bone to be in the royal guard, but if your heart isn’t in the task of taking frisk to the barrier, then i’ll take frisk, just the two of us, to the barrier first thing in the morning. i’ll tell everyone that i found a human in one of your traps and decided to take care of things myself. that way, everyone knows how cool you are and you don’t have to step on undyne’s toes.”

__

Papyrus tapped his chin. “WELL, IT IS AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE HUMAN’S PLAN. YES, THAT WILL WORK IF YOU ACTUALLY GET YOUR LAZY BONES UP AT A REASONABLE HOUR. THANKS, BROTHER. WAIT…. IF MY _HEART_ ISN’T IN THE TASK…. SANS, WAS THAT ANOTHER PUN?”

__

As Sans laughed at his brother’s expense, he opened the door wider. “kid, i assume there’s a reason you came here tonight instead of first thing in the morning? come on in, i don’t want you to freeze down to the bone.”

__

Frisk spent the night on the skeletons’ lumpy old couch with a blanket draped over her, courtesy of Papyrus. When the morning came, she woke up to the smell of ketchup and hash browns. Sans was sitting on the floor nearby, with a binder full of papers in his lap and two Styrofoam plates beside him. He handed Frisk the plate that still had more than just crumbs. “here. grillby’s has a special breakfast menu, so i got you something to go. i wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

__

“Thank you.” Frisk accepted the food. “Where’s Papyrus?”

__

“he wanted to put his all into our last day of patrol. isn’t my brother the coolest?”

__

“Yeah. He’s helped me make friends with Undyne in so many timelines. I’ve never been able to do it without him.” Frisk ate a bit of her food, but Sans remained quiet. She peeked at him.

__

Sans was making that face he made whenever he was truly upset, the one where his eye lights went out.

__

Frisk’s heart twisted. The timelines. Sans. “I’m sorry.”

__

“kid, you’re the one who turns back time, aren’t you? why do you keep doing it? you’ve got good food, good drink, friends who really care about you. i don’t know what it is you want, but chances are i’ve already asked you to _stop_ , and you haven’t done it. why can’t you just be happy with what you have? i’m sure i’ve already told you, so i’m going to remind you: if you keep doin’ this, someday, all of time and space, yeah, all of it, _everything,_ it will all just end.”

__

For a moment, Frisk could have sworn she was in the judgment hall, facing down Sans as he sent bone attack after bone attack and skull-shaped laser cannon after skull-shaped laser cannon to bring ‘her’ massacre of the Underground to an end. But no, she was still on Sans’s lumpy couch, and her eyes were stinging. “Did your reports tell you that all my time traveling is what’s going to cause everything to end? You make it sound like I’m doing this because I want to. Because I think reliving the same two days and having all the friends I make down here constantly forget me is _fun_ or something. No, Sans, this is hell, and the only reason I’m putting myself through all this is because I’m determined to find a way to _prevent_ the end of the world. I think I’ve finally found a way, but it has to be _absolutely perfect_ , because if things go even a little wrong, I don’t know if I’ll be able to reset away from the Underground, and everything could be _gone, just like that, forever!_ I’m sorry if knowing about the resets makes you feel like nothing you do matters, because the truth is, everything you’ve done matters to me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? You’ve already been helping me save the world here.”

__

“is that what you think you’re doin’?” Sans turned a page in his binder. “i guess that fits with our data, but if you’re not causing the end of the world, then what is? we don’t have any other indication of what could be causing that, and who would ask a little kid to save the world by themselves anyway? i’ll still try to help you, but i can’t fully believe you until you can prove to me that it’s something else that’s going to put an end to everything.”

__

“I know.” Frisk slid off the couch and squeezed her arms around Sans. “I can’t tell you what’s going on – it’s a military secret. But you’re a _scientist_ , Sans, and a _good_ one at that. I already promised you, in another timeline, that if you want to help out with this kind of thing, I can put in a word for you at work. We always need good scientists.”

__

“i know you like older monsters and all, but ease up on the hug, kid. you’re gonna _crush_ me.”

__

Frisk’s face burned. Was she that obvious? Now Sans was going to reject her. That was fine. That was fine. What chance did she ever stand with him anyway?

__

It was not fine. Even if she did save the world, would she ever find that special someone to enjoy life with? She’d thought for sure it might be Sans – he understood her in a way no one else in the Underground did. He understood her in a way that no one else she’d met ever had.

__

She looked away. “No one ever believes I’m not a kid. I know I’m short and not as curvy as other women, but I’m fully grown. If I’d known how monsters would interpret my striped shirt, I would have worn something else to come find you. At least this one I can prove. After we break the barrier, we’ve just got to get down to my car. I left my license in there, and it will be able to tell you that I’m twenty-five.”

__

“sure, kid.” Sans extracted himself from Frisk’s embrace and got to his feet. “speaking of the barrier, are you ready to go? i know a shortcut.”

__

Frisk ran her fingers through her hair in a poor attempt to comb it. It ended up looking as smooth as the lumpy couch behind her, but it would have to do, just for one day. She just wished she had some deodorant with her. “Alright, I’m ready.”

__

Without any of Sans’s usual leading the two of them into someplace dark so that a sudden change of scenery wasn’t as jarring, or without any other warning really, there was a loud popping sound, and they were at the king’s front door. Frisk blinked. She rubbed at her eyes. “Sans, don’t do that.”

__

“what? you’re the one who said you wanted to _pop_ _in_ and pay our king a visit.” Sans’s eye lights were back in his sockets, which were scrunched up in amusement.

__

Why did Frisk like this guy and his dumb pranks again?

__

Groaning, Frisk knocked on Asgore’s door.

__

“i didn’t think my jokes were that terrible. i thought they were rather _humerus._ ”

__

Frisk was spared having to respond to Sans by the door opening.

__

“Howdy.” Asgore greeted them both with a large smile on his face, but when he met Frisk’s eyes, his expression fell. “Oh.”

__

Sans extended a finger toward Frisk. “i was _shocked_ to find this kid trying to solve my bro’s electricity maze this morning. she says she knows how to free us all without anyone having to die.”

__

“Is that so?” Asgore gestured inside. “Maybe you’d both like to come in and have a cup of tea?”

__

“No.” Frisk stepped inside and headed straight down the stairs. “I’d like to get all monsters here and the barrier broken as soon as possible. I know how much everyone wants to see the sky.”

__

Each tread squeaked as Frisk stepped on it, but no one was following behind her. She looked up through the banister, where Asgore was looking down to meet Sans’s eyes. “What do you make of this human?”

__

"it seems she’s responsible for that massive time-space anomaly we picked up, but-”

__

Frisk held her breath. Was Sans letting her off the hook?

__

“-she’s not old enough to be _responsible,_ if that makes sense. she’s got a lot she’s got to learn, but whatever it is she’s doing with the barrier, it appears she knows what she’s doing. i trust her enough for this, not that we have much of a choice.”

__

Sans was only letting her off the hook because he still thought she was a little kid who would reset if she didn't get her way. That needed fixing as soon as they could possibly get down the mountain. Grabbing two bars of the banister, Frisk asked, “Are you two coming?”

__

“yeah, just a sec. if you want the whole underground to be there, i’ve just got a couple of calls i need to make.” Sans pulled a cell phone out of his hoodie pocket and pressed some buttons.

__

Frisk decided to wait for everyone at the barrier. She hurried the rest of the way down the path and through the golden flowers of the king’s garden, and she met Flowey in the tunnel where thick white magic separated the monsters from the surface world.

__

Flowey bared his fangs at her. “I said your plan had better not be boring. It was boring waiting for you all night. Where were you?”

__

“Falling to my death because of exhaustion.” Frisk crossed her arms. “I’m not a flower. I need to sleep. At least I convinced Sans to help me with a shortcut, okay? Everyone is on the way here as we speak.”

__

It was less than fifteen minutes later that the king had the six human souls out and Flowey was using the human souls and every monster in the Underground to break the barrier. When it was over, the monsters were blinking at the morning’s clear, blue sky, and it was time for Frisk to befriend Undyne.

__


	2. Chapter 2

Frisk looked for Papyrus among the monsters as they made their way down the mountain. When she found him, he was already walking in a group with Undyne and Sans.

“...did i even bother? even if i could be with someone like her, what would it matter anyway?” Sans was dragging his slippers in the dirt.

Frisk knew she shouldn’t eavesdrop, but who was he talking about anyway? A part of her dared hope that he was talking about _her_ as someone he’d like to be with – and her pounding heart agreed with that part of her, but how could he have taken that kind of interest in her? He still thought she was a little kid. Sans was talking about Toriel maybe, but not her.

“Still, that took some _guts!_ I didn’t know you had it in you.” Undyne’s grin widened at Sans.

“heh.” Sans’s eye lights flicked to the side, ignoring Papyrus as he complained about the pun and Undyne as she protested that the pun was unintended.

Now was Frisk's chance, before she made this awkward. “Sans! Papyrus! There you two are. Who’s your friend?”

“Papyrus.” Undyne narrowed her eye. “Is that the human that you and Sans told me he found in one of your traps while you were recalibrating one of your other puzzles this morning?”

“WELL, YES.” Papyrus seemed suddenly very interested in the rocky cliff face that they were passing. “YOU SEE, WHEN I SAID THAT I DIDN’T SEE A HUMAN IN MY ELECTRICITY MAZE, I MEANT THAT I DIDN’T SEE A HUMAN THERE. IN MY ELECTRICITY MAZE, I MEAN. IT’S NOT FAIR. SANS GOT THE HUMAN OUT BEFORE I COULD SEE HOW WELL MY TRAP WORKED! AND YES, I TALKED TO THEM BRIEFLY, BUT HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT THE CHILD WITH SANS WAS A HUMAN? I HAD NEVER SEEN A HUMAN BEFORE IN MY LIFE!”

Frisk hurried to fall in step with the monsters, racking her brain for anything that might appease Undyne. Something from anime, maybe, but what did Frisk know about anime anyway? Well, she guessed she had watched a few seasons of Inuyasha with her cousin when she was younger, so maybe she could try something a little crazy? “It’s true. He defeated me with his cunning maze, so now I’m his best friend. Isn’t that how it works?”

“You? His best friend? Ha! In your dreams, punk! Who taught him how to be a fearsome warrior? Who’s giving him cooking lessons? Not you, you dweeb! You’ve never even actually fought him.”

“WHAT THE HUMAN MEANT TO SAY WAS THAT NOW SHE’S MY NEW BEST _PUZZLE-LOVING_ FRIEND. YOU’RE STILL MY _BEST_ FRIEND. AND.” Papyrus shuffled toward Frisk, pulling something out from behind his back and placing it in her hands. It was a bone wrapped in a bow. “AS MY COOL NEW FRIEND, OF COURSE THE HUMAN WOULD WANT TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH ALL MY OTHER COOL FRIENDS, SO SHE BROUGHT YOU A PRESENT. ON HER OWN.”

Undyne stared at the bone. “Uh, thanks?” Undyne took the bone from Frisk’s fingers. “I’ll just put it with all the others once when we go back to pack. Papyrus, can I talk to you a minute?”

As Undyne and Papyrus raced further ahead so they could talk, Frisk smiled to herself. Papyrus could deal with Undyne.

Sans stayed behind with Frisk. “so you were saying about a car?”

She pointed down the zig-zagging trail, where off-road parking was obscured by leafy green treetops. “It’s there. We’ll see it when we get closer, and I will show you that I’m not a little kid.”

For a minute, Sans was silent. He may have been spotting the thin line that was all that could be seen of the road looked from this height, or he may have been noticing the distance between this side of Mount Ebott and the nearest city, or at least Frisk hoped he was. She hoped he was drawing the conclusion that she must have driven to reach the mountain and was thus older than he thought she was.

“you know how my bro really likes cars, right?” Sans waited for Frisk to nod. “well, one time, i found this soaked, torn driving permit in the dump, and i figured he’d think it was cool if i could just restore it a bit, and you know what it told me? even a seventeen-year-old can start learning how to drive here. at seventeen, you’re an older kid, sure, but still a kid. but i’m sure that license of yours will tell me if you’re a kid or an adult, so if you say you’re twenty-five, i’m going to believe you until we get to your car. i just hope you aren’t _steering_ me wrong, ‘cause, you know i’m twenty-four, don’t you? if you are a kid, i couldn’t date you if i wanted to. you’d have to leave the timeline alone until you turn eighteen if you wanted a chance with me. in fact, how about i make you a little bet - i bet that you’ll just reset again, despite anything you say. if you don’t, i’ll take you on a date the day you turn eighteen, but if i’m right, well, i wouldn’t remember this conversation anyway, so you aren’t getting that date.”

Frisk batted her eyes at Sans. “And if I am a year older than you?”

Sans’s eye sockets went dark. “Then I’ll need something to work with to believe that you’ve got a good reason for all the resets.”

She shivered.

“lighten up. you know i’m too much of a _lazybones_ for me to ever hurt you. ‘sides, i know we must have been friends in some other timeline, and i’d always thought, if i ever met you, i could be your friend, but what do i know? i’m just a _numskull_. but seriously, throw me a bone here.”

Frisk tilted her head up toward the sky, letting the sun warm her face. Among all the blue, she couldn’t see the alien spaceship that she knew was somewhere in orbit around Earth, but it was up there somewhere, its threat hidden in the day’s beauty. After a moment, she looked at Sans instead. “I’m sorry, but it is a military secret.”

Sans looked away. “i’d hoped…. nah, never mind. it’s not important.”

“Sans.” Frisk set a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to be upset. I understand. I might not be able to tell you what’s going on, but as soon as I can contact my unit, I will. What’s going on is something that is going to affect monsters, so I might get cleared to tell Asgore, and if I do, maybe he’ll be able to fill you in. But even if he can’t, I can tell you to be careful, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

He observed her for a minute, probably calculating the odds of something or other being true, but when he finally met her eyes, he remained silent.

From up ahead, Undyne and Papyrus were running back up the trail. “Sans!” Undyne shouted. “Did you put your brother up to lying to me?”

Sans shrugged and glanced toward Papyrus.

“I’M SORRY.” Papyrus stopped in front of him and Frisk. “I KNOW THE HUMAN WAS CONVINCED THAT I CAPTURED HER, BUT HER SHOWING UP ON OUR DOORSTEP LATE AT NIGHT DIDN’T SEEM VERY… CAPTURE-Y, AND I COULDN’T KEEP LYING TO MY DEAR FRIEND ABOUT HER. BEING FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE IS HARD!”

“Ugh.” Undyne narrowed her eye at Sans. When he ignored her, she shifted her gaze to Frisk instead. “Papyrus told me we have you to thank for being free. And he said something about you needing me to save the world or something like that. So tell me, was that your only reason for setting us free? You’d better not be pretending to be friends with Papyrus just to get to me.”

Was that a challenge? No, what was Frisk thinking – this was Undyne, so of course it was a challenge. She leveled her gaze at her. “I was looking for someone with a white soul, and the energy readings coming off Mount Ebott was our best lead. We expected that I’d find some forgotten human tribe living in the top of the mountains, but when I found, trapped in the Underground, an entire _race_ that, to be honest, humans have forgotten even exist, I couldn’t just leave you all down there. If it was just a soul I needed, don’t you think I would have taken Toriel’s or Asgore’s and just left?”

“What?” Undyne thrust her hand to point up toward the entrance to New Home. “You humans sealed us Underground and then just _forgot_ about us? Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

Papyrus prodded Frisk toward Undyne. “AND HERE I WAS THINKING THAT UNDYNE WAS UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF BEFRIENDING A HUMAN. IT SEEMS I WAS SADLY MISTAKEN!”

“Are you saying I couldn’t befriend a human if I tried?” Undyne lifted Frisk by her waist. “Hahaha, as if! I’ll befriend humans all right. I’ll befriend all the humans. I’ll make them like me so much that their whole lives revolve around me. It’s the perfect revenge! Come on, human – you and me, we’re going to have some bestie time!”

In a single leap, Undyne had them hurtling down the next switchback. From there, she jogged them further down the trail to where an ancient rock slide had piled up beside the trail. “Okay, _bestie_ , we’re going to have a weight-lifting contest.”

Undyne set Frisk down and suplexed a boulder instead.

Always so passionate. Smiling, Frisk lifted the smallest rock in the pile.

Undyne suplexed two boulders at once. “Give it your all!”

Frisk found a larger rock. She could barely lift it off the ground, but Undyne’s grin grew wider all the same.

“That’s it. Lift from your knees and show the world what’s in your heart. Like this. NNNYYYAAAAHHHHH!” Undyne lifted the entire pile of rocks and boulders.

“Way to go!” Frisk reached into her pocket and pulled out a thick, white bracelet made of some unidentifiable type of stone. “I’ve got one more for you, if you want to save the universe with me.”

“What is that, some sort of friendship bracelet?” Undyne dropped the boulders with a resounding thud and leaped to Frisk’s side. “It looks like something straight out of one of Alphys’s history movies.”

“A friendship bracelet?” The image of seven cavemen and some monster sitting around and carving friendship bracelets popped into Frisk’s head. She giggled and rolled up her sleeve, showing Undyne a red stone bracelet around her own wrist. “I suppose they might be. These are ancient artifacts called Power Bands, and there are eight of them, one for each soul color. They grant people the power to save the world, but who would you save the world with but seven of your best friends?”

Undyne took the white bracelet.

As soon as Undyne took it, Frisk expected it to react – or at least, she had hoped it would – but the bracelet remained nothing but some carved stone as Undyne slid it onto her wrist. “These are AWESOME! How do they work?”

Frisk sat herself on one of the nearby rocks and frowned at the dirt. If the artifact wasn’t reacting to Undyne, what other monster might it react to? “We don’t know how they work exactly. We know that they ‘choose’ people to use them, so to speak. We know that the people they choose are always ones whose souls are the same color as the artifact, but they don’t react to just anyone with the correct soul color. Actually, we don’t know what else they use to choose someone, but we’ve noticed they usually choose people with deep passions, a strong desire to do the right thing, and an unwavering loyalty to their friends. I’d thought that you’d be the monster that the white one was most likely to choose, but maybe it senses that your people need you to stay with them to protect them from danger?” Frisk raised her eyes. “Even though it didn’t choose you, I’d still like to be your friend.”

“Ngh.” Undyne slid the bracelet off and stared at it for a minute. “Papyrus, maybe? I hope it’s not him – he’s just too innocent and nice to send into a real battle. Or Alphys? I hope it’s not her either – she doesn’t even want to fight!”

“We’ve got to get this right.” Frisk got to her feet. “Let’s start with the monsters most willing to kill if they found themselves in a fight to the death and go from there.”

Undyne held up a finger. “You’ve got to let me spar you sometime, but heck yeah, let’s do this!”

When Frisk and Undyne rejoined the group of monsters heading down the mountain, Sans and Papyrus were nowhere to be seen. But even if Frisk couldn’t see Sans right now, how could she miss the opportunity to find the monster who needed to fly to the other side of Nevada with her and risk letting him down with another reset?

She didn’t know if the feeling was initiating a save, but the sight of monsters pouring down the mountain and the sounds of Undyne’s enthusiasm were filling her with determination. “Aren’t those RG01 and RG02 under that tree? Let’s try them.”

She and Undyne tried the entire royal guard. They tried Asgore and Toriel. They tried Mettaton, Alphys, Muffet, and any adult monster who was willing to save the universe from an unspecified threat. They even tried Temmie, the shiest of the Whimsuns, and the Annoying Dog (though the Annoying Dog cost them an hour or two of trying to retrieve the artifact from it as it ran ahead on the trail).

By midday, when they reached the trail head and the little gravel pull-off on which Frisk’s rented Mercedes was parked, the only monsters they had left to try were the skeleton brothers.

Undyne plopped onto the Mercedes’s hood. “Guess it really is Papyrus. Well, guess what? You’re just going to have to keep him safe for me, you little punk!”

“I will.” Frisk was hooking her human cell phone up to her car charger. When she was done, she opened the glove compartment and retrieved her license. Just try to tell her she was a kid after this, Sans!

Soon, Papyrus was running across the gravel. “WOWIE! IT’S A REAL CAR!”

And behind Papyrus was Sans.

Frisk hurried to Sans. She shoved her license at him. “See? I told you – twenty-five!”

“you weren’t _kidding_ me.”

“YOU’RE TWENTY-FIVE? I THOUGHT YOU WERE ALMOST EIGHTEEN, WHICH IS THE AGE OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS!” Papyrus skidded to a halt, which sent bits of gravel flying at the car’s tires.

Frisk walked back to the car and set the white artifact on the car’s hood. “Undyne, could you take care of explaining this to him? I need to call my unit and see if I can’t get some help introducing you all back to the surface.” When she had the driver’s door open, she paused for a second. She gestured up the road. “There’s a village of weirdos around the mountain a bit, and I wouldn’t recommend letting them be the first humans monsters encounter – they still talk about Asriel ‘killing’ a human child.”

Undyne pounded a fist into her hand. “They lock us up, and then they blame Asriel for his sister’s death. Someone has got to pound some sense into those humans!”

“nah. frisk’s right – someone’s got to set the record straight, but that can come later, and without violence.” Sans strolled toward the car, and Frisk caught him peeking through the windows at the duffel bag in the back seat. “but if we’re going to live on the surface with humans, we need allies first. i don’t think other humans are going to take kindly to us showing up and beating sense into their weirdos.”

Seating herself in the driver’s seat, Frisk nodded toward the bracelet on the hood. “Luckily, there’s an opportunity for humans to start seeing monsters as allies lying right there. If you could explain it…?”

“Right!” Undyne snatched up the artifact. “Listen up, Papyrus!”

Frisk closed the door, put the keys in the ignition, and started the motor. Although she stayed in park, the car’s battery started charging her phone enough that it wouldn’t die on her mid-call.

_Sargent Lorraine Bekoff – call._

“Report,” Sargent Bekoff said, by way of greeting.

Frisk reclined in her seat, watching through the windshield as Undyne play-acted something for the skeleton brothers that involved her kicking gravel up in the air. “I found them, but they’re not what we expected. We’re dealing with a previously-uncontacted nation native to America, but, as it turns out, having a white soul isn’t a human trait.”

Through the phone, Frisk heard the clink of a mug on a desk, likely a mug holding Sargent Bekoff’s fifth cup of coffee for the day. This was followed by sounds rapid typing. “We have a few linguists in Texas that I can request on short notice, one in Hawaii who has been investigating whale song, or one who may have worked with geographically-closer languages in Utah, and there is also a diplomat in D.C. who I might convince to head west as early as next month. That is, unless we can get some support from the commander-in-chief to get our people out there sooner.”

“The linguists aren’t necessary – these people speak English.”

“They do?” The typing stopped. “Are you certain they do? We’ve picked up one of _their_ spaceships near your coordinates, and I have more of an explanation of how they speak English than how an uncontacted people would speak English.”

“Unless that craft can fit hundreds of those shape-shifting aliens, I’m certain they speak English. Besides, I have an idea or two how this nation learned our language, some more diplomatically delicate than others.” Frisk glanced out the window at Undyne, who was offering the white artifact to Papyrus.

Papyrus slipped the artifact on his wrist, where it hung with as little sign of life to it as most rocks that Frisk could find on the mountain. “Besides-”

“If they haven’t been contacted before, there is no reason why hundreds of them would speak English.”

Frisk sat up. “I’ve spoken to hundreds of them in English – not just the scientists or the politicians, but their ice cream vendors and their little children. Anyway, as I was saying, it turns out that having a white soul isn’t a human trait. They’re monsters, in the sense that it’s what they call their species, but they’re intelligent, and they have consciences, just like us. In fact, it’s what they say the traits of their white souls are – hope, love, and compassion. And it fits them. It does.”

On Sargent Bekoff’s end of the phone, the typing resumed. She was probably typing up ideas and leads to follow up on concerning the monsters, specialists and miracles she could pull off, all while asking only for her next caffeine fix. The sound helped Frisk relax, if she was honest – at least she wouldn’t have to worry much about the monsters’ safety when she returned to dealing with the aliens.

“These _monsters,_ as you call them,” Sargent Bekoff said at last. “We might not have known about them, but they would have to have known about us if they know English at all. How were their dealings with you?”

Outside, Monster Kid had reached the bottom of the trail head. Promptly, Monster Kid tripped face-first into the gravel and got back up with an unwavering smile.

Frisk smiled herself. “Humans trapped them inside a mountain a long time ago, but they seem to know that the world has changed since then. I’ve had a few scared monsters try to fight me, but for the most part, they seem eager to make peace and rejoin the rest of the world.” Her smile dropped. “There’s something else you should know too: that energy the aliens are chasing, I think it’s part of the monsters’ biology. I expect they’ll be targeted.”

“There’s already a squad on its way to back you up. I will explain things to them. You tell the monsters that they’re coming, and they’ll be there to protect them-”

“Clearance to inform their leaders of the threat?” Frisk could see Asgore now, bending over to admire some little white flowers beside the trail head.

“Granted, but make sure it stays with the leadership. We’ll have to treat any military personnel they have as civilians in this circumstance-”

Frisk glanced at Undyne, grateful that even if it were the case that the car couldn’t afford Frisk some privacy in reporting to her unit, that at least Sargent Bekoff used the quietest voice Frisk had ever heard from someone of her rank. “If I may, I don’t think they’ll appreciate that.”

“If they’ve been trapped under a mountain, they won’t have had any chance to develop space technologies. I doubt they’ll appreciate being annihilated by careless extraterrestrial scientists the moment they attempt to rejoin the rest of our planet.”

Sargent Bekoff had a point about the monsters’ lack of opportunity, but still, Frisk couldn’t imagine any scenario where Undyne and many of the other monsters would allow humans to do all the saving when faced with aliens who were well on the path to mistakenly destroying the universe. If she couldn’t convince Sargent Bekoff to allow monsters a little more truth, could she still access her saves on Mount Ebott, even outside the Underground? Perhaps if she could just present the situation a little differently-

No. She couldn’t do that to Sans again, just for a chance that a conversation would turn out more favorable to monsters on its second time around. She crossed her arms. “Their leaders might want to have their people on the lookout for the shape-shifters.”

“You said that you were attacked by some scared monsters. Clearly, we can’t afford to let them panic, so here are your orders: fill their leaders in and stress the importance of not worrying their populace, and if there is a monster that the White Power Band chooses, you may still fill them in on the aliens and bring them back here with you if their leaders allow. Otherwise, the aliens are still confidential. Am I clear?”

“Yes, understood.” Frisk pressed her lips tight together as she ended the call.

When she climbed out of the car, a short monster was leaning against the rear passenger door, wearing the White Power Band. But the White Power Band had activated – instead of being its little stone bracelet, it was a total-body-concealing armored costume with an upside-down heart on its chest and a dark strip covering its wearer’s eyes. “you look tense. you’re not going to _call_ off this timeline, are you? ‘cause, whatever it is, i can help.”

“Sans.” Frisk’s heart fluttered. Should she be more relieved that the White Power Band chose a monster who could actually defend himself, scared that of all the people who might get hurt going with her to confront the aliens, it had to be Sans, or elated that she, apparently, would be working with the guy she most wanted to keep in contact with? “There’s trouble on the way, okay? Even if I wanted to reset on you, it’s not something a reset could fix. My sargent says I have to talk to Asgore, _privately_.”


	3. Chapter 3

Frisk asked Asgore to walk down the road with her a bit, where there was a pull-off overlooking the valley. Before they left, Sans intercepted them for a quick word with Asgore, who having had his say, gave Sans his blessing to come with them to hear whatever it was Frisk had to say.

As the three of them walked on the edge of the asphalt, Asgore turned his head toward Frisk. “You said you couldn’t be our ambassador, so I am confused what this is about.”

“It’s got a lot to do with the reason I can’t be your ambassador.” Frisk gave a quick sketch of her background – how she’d gone to boot camp at age eighteen, and how she’d come to Mount Ebott on assignment, the details of which she kept for until they were further away from stray monster ears. By the time they reached the pull-off, she’d finished the basics of her story. “I spoke to my commanding officer, and I was given permission to warn you – there is a group of scientists who noticed M-waves, a type of energy they’d never encountered before, coming from our planet-”

“You make it sound like the scientists aren’t from Earth,” Sans said. He tilted his helmet skyward.

Frisk nodded. “Yeah, they’re extraterrestrials. Anyway, the contacted human governments around the world to ask permission to come study M-waves, and the government over in Japan agreed, on the condition that the aliens share their findings with the Japanese. I heard that they’re looking for another source of electricity or something like that, but I guess that’s not important, not beyond that the Japanese didn’t mean any harm.”

At the edge of the pull-off was a wooden fence, which Asgore leaned on. “What does this have to do with us monsters?”

“A lot.” Frisk pointed over her shoulder. “The largest concentration of M-waves, or magic, as you call it, is around Mount Ebott, and my country had reason to believe that because the Japanese told the aliens that they have permission to be in Japan, the aliens believe that they have permission to be anywhere on Earth. And now it looks like we were right.”

“Well, I suppose monsters could make introductions to both humans and aliens at the same time.” Asgore smiled. “I don’t see what’s so terrible about that.”

Sans, on the other hand, scooted along the wooden fence and leaned toward Frisk’s ear. “Is this the universe-ending threat you’ve been talking about?”

“Yeah. I don’t have your direct proof of the aliens, but the suit you’re wearing shouldn’t have been damaged like mine was when I fell Underground.” Frisk tapped something on Sans’s wrist. “I told Magenta to upgrade this suit with a built-in radio and everything like the rest of us have. If he listened to me for once, you should be able to ask the other six Souls if I’m telling the truth.”

“A built-in radio? Hello? Is anybody there?”

The suits’ radios were small little things that had been added to the helmets themselves, small enough that only the person wearing the suit should be able to hear anything. Knowing this, Frisk quietly looked over the valley and enjoyed the cool breeze touching her face as she waited for Sans to have his first conversation with the rest of their team.

“Kid- Frisk, if there is a radio, you could say there’s some radio silence right now.” Sans gestured down at himself. “But having this suit is really _out of this world_ , and it’s enough for me to believe that there’s something more going on. You can prove the alien thing to me when you have a chance. For now, I’d just like to hear what we’re up against.”

Nodding, Frisk glanced at Asgore.  He was stooping by a patch of rock that wasn’t quite bare, but graced with a cluster of blue-violet flowers. “ New climates for one,” Asgore said. “I see the grasses and brushes  and cacti  down there, and they’re beautiful,  but this whole place is drier than I remember. It will take a lot of work to get our aquatic citizens  living on the  somewhere suitable on the  surface  from a place like this. And that city for another – how are humans able to sustain a city that large with so little water around?”

Frisk didn’t know. She’d been surprised to see skyscrapers in a desert state like Nevada at all, but more especially  away from a  such a tourist  destination  as Las Vegas. Questions that monsters might have about how things on the surface had changed just showed a complication that someone would have to deal with, but they weren’t what was most important at the moment.

“The aliens went to Toyama Prefecture in Japan first,” Frisk said. She blinked out at the vegetation. How were M-waves affecting the local climate anyway? “There were some M-waves there too, but whatever experiments they did- well, the Japanese government pretended there was nothing wrong at first, but eventually they had to pretend that there was a nuclear power plant that melted down. They asked the aliens to leave, but they didn’t.”

There was a soft whirring sound, and from the distance, a fleet of armored helicopters was approaching.

Frisk watched them come. Did they have to be so obviously military? On the one hand, she’d seen for herself how much chance monsters stood if they had to fight one of the shapeshifters, and they would need the extra protection. But on the other, what happened to not wanting to cause a panic?

When Frisk looked at the monsters, Asgore was still studying the flowers, but Sans had his eyes on the helicopters. Sans asked, “If this is a secret, then what are you going to tell everyone about those?”

“The Air Force practices all the time above the Nevada desert. They could say they’re doing some sort of exercise, but I don’t know what they’re going to go with.” What would they come up with since they were coming to the mountain? Frisk grabbed the top of the wooden fence. “They’re really here as reinforcements – one of the aliens’ ships was spotted in this range, probably looking for a good spot to set up another experiment. Our people are here to hunt them down, and they’ll be protecting monsters too. I’ve been asked to make sure no one panics, to make sure that no one tries to fight something they don’t understand just because they’re on Mount Ebott. We’re asking for your cooperation.”

Asgore straightened up. “This is really something. What a situation for monsters to find ourselves in the day we’re finally free.” He turned toward the road. “Frisk, I know you can’t be our ambassador, but will you advocate for us among humans?”

“I will.”

"Then I shall tell my people to cooperate with your military.” Asgore took a few steps toward the road, but he stopped before he reached the asphalt. “I wish when this is over, your people and mine can get along as equals. After all the time you spent looking for someone who can wear that white band, I shall assume there’s hope of that. You’ll be wanting to take Sans?”

Sans was still leaning against the fence, watching the helicopters.

Frisk tried to catch Sans’s notice to send him a smile, but his eyes didn’t leave the aircraft. “With your permission.”

“It’s fine. Sans, I want you to go with Frisk and show the humans who we are.”

“’kay.” Sans took his attention off the aircraft as Asgore crunched toward the road. He pointed his helmet toward Frisk, as though waiting for the extra explanation she’d mentioned.

Just Sans and Frisk, looking out over the valley. But it couldn’t last.

Frisk started off. “We’ve got to go. We have a flight to catch. I can tell you everything in the car.”

“’kay.” Sans trudged along behind her.

If Sans was reluctant to come, it was because he didn’t like thoughts of fighting or being separated from Papyrus, and not because it had anything to do with Frisk. Or so she told herself as she led Sans back to her rental car. By the time they returned to the trail head, the helicopters were touching down just off the road, and there was a soldier watching Frisk and Sans come up the road.

“Private Aveline, the president wants to speak with you!”

The president? She hurried, wondering what the president wanted with her. Sure, there were aliens, but her unit had dealt with aliens before, and the president always had more pressing matters then. And even when he did contact her unit, it was one of the higher-ups that he called.

The soldier led Frisk to a helicopter, where Asgore had cramped inside to speak on the radio. They waited for a few minutes for Asgore to finish his call.

When Asgore climbed out of the helicopter, he had a frown on his face. Frisk gave him her best reassuring smile as she took his place. “Mr. President, this is Private Frisk Aveline reporting.”

“King Asgore just promised me that his monsters would cooperate with our military. Do you expect that they will do so?”

Frisk closed her eyes and pictured a little yellow star, like the ones she’d used in the Underground while she was still learning how to save and load at will. For a moment, she allowed her soul to slip out of her body, into the  endless black void in which she could touch two options: CONTINUE and RESET. If she could still reach the void, she could still load a save if anything went wrong. She returned to her body.  “Yes, sir, I do.”

“Good. Now I want to hear it from the mouth of the soldier who found us the monsters: what are monsters like?”

“In my experience, they’re a lot like humans. They can think and feel, same as us.”

As the president proceeded to ask more about monsters and their history, Frisk listened closely to his tone. He sounded as though he were answering questions for the democratic debates, so Frisk couldn’t tell for sure how he felt about monsters or their sudden appearance in Nevada.  Nonetheless, over the next several minutes, Frisk answered any question he asked about Mount Ebott, the barrier, and the six human souls.

A s the interview went on, the sun lowered from its noonday hanging overhead. Frisk knew that monsters were news for the president, but didn’t the man have any more urgent matters to attend to than talking to a twenty-five-year old private?

Eventually, the president took the conversation in a different direction: “ Are you on Twitter? ”

She knew the rules about posting information that was sensitive or otherwise a problem for military personnel to post. She knew the rules about otherwise giving away locations too. “Of course.” She wrapped her fingers around her monster phone and looked out the window to locate Toriel. She’d known she’d need to return the phone, and whenever the president let her go seemed like a good time.

“Great. I need you to do something unusual.”

Frisk blinked. “Sir?”

“When I finish giving you your new orders, I need you to take a selfie with King Asgore Dreemurr and Sans the Skeleton and tweet it at the white house with the hashtag _monstermash_.”

T oriel was standing a few feet from the rental car with Sans. She was offering him a wrapped piece of butterscotch-cinnamon pie, which Sans took and shuffled off with, leaving Toriel to frown after him. What was that about?

Whatever it was, Frisk could worry about it later. “I will do that. What are the rest of my orders?”

“Other than your tweet, the existence of monsters is to remain a secret for now. Be sure it stays that way. I’ve ordered the helicopters to evacuate the monsters to someplace less risky, but one of the wingnuts, Airman Pin, is to return your rental car, and one of the copters is to return you and the White Whatever-we-call-you directly to Area 51. Dismissed.”

F risk put on a smile as she climbed out of the helicopter and pushed down the feeling that, maybe, that her last reset wasn’t necessary and she’d let Sans down for nothing. But how was she supposed to know that the POTUS would suddenly come through to get her a lift back to base? She collected her duffel, her phone, and her charger, and winced at her low phone battery. She got Asgore and Sans together, explaining in a hushed voice that her leaders wanted a photo, and she used the last of her battery to send the tweet.

A few minutes after that, she’d handed off the car keys to Airman Pin, returned Toriel’s phone, and taken Sans to find which helicopter it was that was supposed to give them a lift.

They climbed in.

Already inside were two more Souls, the Blue Soul and the Yellow Soul, suited up.

“Red!” Blue greeted.

Yellow pointed a finger gun Frisk’s way.

Frisk blinked at them. “Were we  going to stay here and fight?”

Blue  shook her head. “No. It’s something worse than that. We were supposed to find your corpse and retrieve the Red  and White  Power  Bands before the aliens got to you. I  was so glad when we got a call saying you’re alive.”

Blue twisted something around her wrist, which pulled her suit back into its blue bracelet form and left her in a standard army uniform, her red hair pulled into a bun. She grabbed Frisk and pulled her into a hug. “Are you hurt? Frightened? You’re going to be okay. You’re-”

Blue gasped over Frisk’s shoulder.

Frisk glanced back.

Sans was climbing into the helicopter with his suit deactivated.  He froze. Slowly, he lifted his eyes toward Blue. “Uh, hi.”

“Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real. Monsters are real.” Blue clung to Frisk.

“Blue, Yellow, this is-”

“The White Soul. Wish we had time for proper introductions and training.” Yellow climbed over Blue and Frisk. He pulled Sans in and closed the door. “Lift off!”

As the pilot started the helicopter, Yellow organized the seating arrangements so that he was by Sans and Frisk and Blue were together in the back seat. In seconds,  Yellow pulled out a gun from somewhere Frisk didn’t see. He’d probably modified his suit to hide more guns than was regulation again. “White, I know they said you’re a civilian, but do you at least know how to use one of these?”

“Only place I’ve ever seen one was in a _magazine._ ”

Y ellow turned his back to Sans and scooted closer. “Then I’ll have to cover you. You keep a look out for flying saucers.”

Frisk grabbed the edge of her seat and leaned forward. “Has anyone spotted that ship recently?”

“Yes, and base says a second one is trying to scan it.” Yellow offered Frisk his gun. “We lost touch with you. Something happen to your suit?”

Frisk took the gun. “Broke it.”

Yellow produced two more guns from somewhere on his leg. “How badly?”

Blue twisted Frisk’s bracelet. Moments later, heavy armor weighed on her well-toned muscles and broken plastic covered her eyes. “Here,” Blue said,  though she  tensed as she  took a glance at Sans, who was touching his skull to the window . “I can take a look.  What did the monsters do to you?”

“Nothing! It broke when I fell. Why would you assume-”

“I know my appearance _rattles_ you, but look on the fright side: if you give monsters a chance, you might make some friends who really scare about you. I can feel it in my bones.” Sans sent Blue his smile.

B lue relaxed at Sans’s antics.

Sans’s puns were fine with Frisk. Most of the time. But now? Frisk crossed her arms. “Sans, would you activate your suit? I don’t know if Magenta installed any of the upgrades he promised  at all , but even if he didn’t give you so much as a parachute,  your suit’s armor will still give you some protection if we run into that saucer Yellow asked you to watch for.”

“Right.” Sans turned his gaze back to the partly-cloudy skies.

“Your… monster… friend was just being nice.” Blue leaned toward Frisk. “Are you jealous because of that?”

Jealous? Jealousy wasn’t a nice thing to admit, but Frisk supposed she was. She nodded toward Yellow. “You have your guy. Let me have mine.”

“I-”

“Is that the saucer?” Sans pointed to something behind them.

Frisk spun.  A spinning black spacecraft was hurtling toward the helicopter, but she and the others would get out alive. They had to. She was determined that they would.

“Turn on your suit!” Yellow shouted.

The helicopter rocked. They turned. It rocked again.

“You four bail out!” the pilot called.

Frisk got to her feet. “Yellow, get Sans. Blue, watch whether my parachute deploys.”

Yellow was already opening the door.  Yellow dove. Then Sans. Frisk followed.

Three. Two. One.

Frisk activated her parachute. Nothing happened. “Bl-”

Soon after Blue grabbed Frisk under her arms, there was a strong upward yank.  Frisk looked around.

Yellow had Sans in one arm, and with his other, he was tracking the flying saucer with his gun. Meanwhile, the helicopter was  shooting its guns at the enemy craft.

The enemy craft fired back.

BOOM!

The helicopter went out in a fireball. Bits of metal flung from the scene. A chunk of blade took out Yellow’s parachute, and he and Sans plummeted.

“No!” Frisk reached for her save.

_L O A D_

Frisk was back in the helicopter’ s back seat with Blue. Sans and Yellow were in front of them, and the pilot was still there, alive. The black saucer was close behind them.

“Turn on your suit!” Yellow shouted.

Sans complied as the helicopter rocked, turned, and rocked again.

“You four bail out!” The pilot called.

“You need to bail too!” Frisk climbed over the seat. She shoved Sans on her way over. “Someone catch Sans!”

The helicopter jerked, and the pilot reached for the guns. “Are you crazy? Get out of here.”

Frisk grabbed the pilot’s hand before he could fire.

The flying saucer fired on them.

_L O A D_

Frisk flung herself out of the back seat. “We don’t stand a chance.  _Everyone_ needs to bail. Blue, get Sans. Yellow, watch if my parachute deploys. Sans-”

“I got you. Just go.” Sans activated his suit and bailed from the helicopter. Blue dove. Then Frisk.

Three. Two. One.

Frisk tried her parachute for her comrade’s sake. Nothing happened.

As Yellow  wrapped one arm around Frisk’ s torso, the pressure on her chest was mitigated by the protective suit. Frisk looked around.

Yellow had his gun out, but his parachute was making it difficult for him to track the saucer with it. Blue had Sans in both arms, and the helicopter was opening fire on the enemy craft.

The saucer fired back.

BOOM!

The helicopter went out in a fireball. Bits of metal flung from the scene. A chunk of blade took out Blue’s parachute, but she and Sans hung level with Frisk and Yellow. The y wove through the debris.

Under Frisk’s helmet, her jaw dropped. She’d expected to take Sans’s place in the plummet by switching Blue and Yellow, but if he could catch whoever it was carrying him with his gravity magic, why hadn’t he done so with Yellow?

Way to go Blue for working better with Sans  than Yellow had ?

Yellow cursed.

The saucer was diving down after them. It opened fire. Bullets stung through Frisk’s leg.

With a single shot, Yellow took out the thin bit of protruding metal where the saucer had its gun. Blue and Sans flew at the saucer, and a large skull materialized in front of the spacecraft.

The craft dodged Sans’s laser beam. It knocked into helicopter debris on its way away, and the debris  raced toward Frisk and Yellow.

Smack!

_L O A D_

Because Frisk was back at the helicopter window and the alien saucer was right there, she raised the gun Yellow gave her and shot. The bullet caught in the window.

“Leave it to me!” the pilot called. The helicopter rocked. They turned. It rocked again. “You four bail out!”

“Aim for its guns.” Frisk got to her feet. “Yellow, get Sans. Blue, watch whether my parachute deploys.”

Yellow, once again, was already opening the door. He dove. Then Sans. Frisk followed.

Three. Two. One.

Frisk showed Blue that her parachute wasn’t working. As Blue grabbed her under her arms, Frisk looked around.

Yellow was tracking the saucer with his free arm while the helicopter was opening fire on the enemy craft.

The saucer fired back.

BOOM!

The resulting fireball flung bits of metal from the scene. A chunk of blade took out Yellow’s parachute, and he and Sans plummeted.

“Not again!”

As Frisk reached for her save file, a gut instinct whispered what she needed to do: she and Blue had to go first  so Sans could catch them without compromising Yellow.

_L O A D_

They were back in the helicopter  near the end of the pilot’s life, but Frisk could figure out how to save the pilot once she’d seen how to get everyone else from danger.

“Turn on your suit!” Yellow shouted.

The helicopter rocked. Frisk grabbed Blue and hurried them from the back as the helicopter turned. As the helicopter rocked again, she sandwiched Blue against the door.

“You four bail out!” The pilot called.

Frisk let Blue up and started opening the door. “Yellow, get Sans. Blue, watch whether my parachute deploys.”

She dove first.  Three. Two. One.

Frisk reached for her parachute. Nothing happened.

As Blue grabbed Frisk under her arms, she looked around.

Yellow had his gun out, and he was trying to track the saucer around his parachute. Above them, the helicopter was opening fire on the enemy craft.

The saucer fired back.

BOOM!

The helicopter went out in a fireball. Bits of metal flung from the scene, and when a chunk of blade took out Blue’s parachute, she and Frisk remained level with Sans and Yellow.

“We’re not falling any faster?” Blue shouted.

Frisk pointed to where Sans was summoning bones to act as a makeshift shield against the spacecraft's bullets. “Get over there. We'll need to rescue them from the debris.”

With a single gunshot, Yellow took out the thin bit of protruding metal where the saucer had its gun.

Blue and Frisk neared the saucer.

A large skull materialized in front of the spaceship, but the craft dodged Sans’s laser beam. It knocked into helicopter debris on its way away, and the debris raced toward Sans and Yellow.

Frisk kicked it. It slowed.

Sans summoned another blaster, but the blaster faded away before it could fire.

Yellow  shot at the debris. It spun into a course that wouldn’t collide with anybody, and the four survivors floated safely down to the sand and sagebrush below them.

Frisk’s feet sunk into the desert, and she barely even stumbled when Blue released her.

Blue turned toward Yellow, who was touching onto ground himself. “Is everyone alright?”

“I don’t know. Red, get over here.” Yellow helped Sans lie in the sand, where he deactivated his suit for him.

The Souls had all survived, hadn’t they? Frisk didn’t still need to figure out how to save Sans before she turned back time for the pilot,  right? She ran over.

Sans was covered in sweat and his eyelids were drooping, but he turned his head toward Frisk anyway. “Don’t worry about me. Just tired is all. You know how much of a lazybones I am, so don’t you think that was a lot of work for me?”

“Don’t give me that. I know how hard you really work, mister, even if you want the other monsters to think you’re much less involved in anything than you really are.” Frisk knelt beside him and started looking him over. If he had been injured, where would it be, his legs? She pulled his pants up to his knees, but there was nothing underneath but bone.

“Really, I’m fine.” Sans closed his eyes. “I was pretty tired before we got attacked. Papyrus was really worried that I was the one chosen, you know? He wanted me to show him that I’d be alright, so I might have sparred him and Undyne while you were talking to someone important or other.”

Frisk had a nagging feeling that Sans wasn’t giving her the full story, like she knew something important that might call him out on a lie, but she couldn’t place her finger on it. All she could do was deactivate her suit and reach into her pocket for her slice of butterscotch-cinnamon pie.

Sans opened an eye socket. “Got my own. But you’re right. I might as well eat it now.”

Blue handed Sans a canteen. “Hey, don’t you know better than to turn away food from a girl? If you’re not going to eat Frisk’s pie, at least have some water. You look like you really need it.”

Frisk shot Blue a grateful look, but as Sans sat up, he made a funny face at his slice of pie. “Nah, never mind. Not hungry. Just need some water and a good nap.” He lay back, sliding the pie into his pocket.

“Sans,” Frisk wiped sweat – slime? – from Sans’s frontal bone, “we’re worried about you. Throw us a bone here.”

Laughing, he settled into the sand. “Really, there’s no problem. But I am glad that Blue’s not scared of me anymore. ”

When Sans started snoring, Frisk got to her feet. Blue had deactivated her suit and was looking herself over. “ I hope White is going to be alright, because t hat was weird. I know Magenta didn’t replace our parachutes with a jet pack or anything, but it felt like I should have known I could fly when my chute got taken out. I think there’s something wrong with me  too .  Maybe the saucer did something? ”

“Are you sure Magenta didn’t do anything? He certainly took the time to install the most advanced targeting system I’ve ever seen into our helmets.” Yellow twisted his suit off, leaving his bulky build and bald head sweating only under the heat of his standard uniform.

Frisk blinked. “Since when does Magenta leave all your gun-hiding places alone? I thought following regulations was the one thing he and I agree on.”

“Yeah.” Blue crossed her arms. “I can guarantee that Magenta didn’t upgrade anything the last time it was his turn to maintain the suits – he made me do everything for him again.”

Yellow’ s eyes widened. He trained a gun on Blue. “ The road over there says we’re close to Area 51, but-”

“Leave her alone!” Frisk eyed the gun. Did Yellow think Blue was one of the shapeshifters or something? “Her flying was Sans’s doing, okay? He’s basically made of M-waves, and he can use his energy to manipulate gravity a little bit.”

Yellow lowered his gun and gazed over at Sans. “Is that why he got weak on me all of a sudden?”

“Maybe.” Frisk strolled to Sans’s side, bent down, and sat him up. He flopped against her shoulder, smearing slime across Frisk’s shirt in the process. “Sans, how much magic did you use during our alien encounter? You caught Blue. You summoned your bones. You used a blaster. Did you help Yellow aim too?”

Sans’s head slid down to Frisk’s neck.

“Sans?” Frisk shook him gently. The breaths from his snores tickled her skin.

She closed her eyes to think for a moment. Whatever would get them, all of them, away from the aliens alive, it couldn’t rely on so much of Sans’s magic next time. Maybe if the helicopter didn’t get taken out at all, he wouldn’t use so much magic catching Blue, and the pilot could keep flying away, alive, as a distraction. Hopefully even get away.

_L O A D _ F A I L E D_

The sun was bright on Frisk’s eyelids. When she opened them, she was still in the desert sands with Sans in her arms and Blue and Yellow giving the two of them concerned looks. Yellow waved toward the road. “Best we get him him to base. We’ve got to keep moving.”


	4. Chapter 4

The flat asphalt shimmered in the heat as they followed the road further south. Frisk carried Sans like a backpack, and as his head rested on her shoulder, bits of slime brushed against her neck, making her shiver.

She couldn’t help but think of the poor monsters who’d become Amalgamates, melting together. “Could someone take a look at how Sans is doing?”

“No change. Just focus on getting to base. Look – there’s a mile marker just up there.” Yellow pointed to a little green sign ahead. “We can use it to tell them where we are. I’ll call for help.”

Blue walked alongside Frisk. “He still isn’t looking good. We should at least get him cooled off. Can we take his jacket and mittens off?”

“I’m sure we can, but I’ve seen him running around near open magma with them on. I don’t think the heat actually bothers him.” Frisk frowned. But how much of Sans’s heat resistance was physical, and how much was his magic? “Let’s get them off.”

Frisk set him in the sand. She propped him up so Blue could remove his outermost clothing. When Sans was left in only his shirt and his sweatpants, Frisk laid him down.

Blue pulled her canteen out of a pants pocket and uncapped it. With it, she poured enough water on Sans’s forehead to wipe away the sweat there. “I don’t know if the Undead can get heatstroke-”

“He’s not Undead. Skeletons are just another type of monster.”

“Okay. I don’t know if skeletons can get heatstroke, but for humans, it’s important to keep the forehead and the back of the neck cool. Should we turn him over and get some water on the top of his spine too?” Blue reached for Sans’s shoulder.

After Frisk helped turn Sans over, Blue poured a generous amount of water over the base of Sans’s skull. “Not so much. Don’t you need some water too? Who knows how long we’re going to be out here?”

“It’s fine.” Blue pointed toward where Yellow stood, suited up, beside the mile marker. “He’s calling for help, isn’t he? Green and Orange got back last night. They’ll be able to read him and come get us.”

Frisk giggled. It was pretty early for Green and Orange to be back from Japan, and this made two rounds of lifts back to Area 51. “Good. Good. Listen, about Sans, I’m concerned that we might be at fault for making him so exhausted. Those abilities-”

“You told us. Stop beating yourself up about it. We’re alive, aren’t we?” Blue capped her canteen. “We’re alive, and none of us are shapeshifters.”

Here Frisk was worrying about Sans, and only Sans, but he wasn’t the only one in for a bad time, was he? Blue just had a gun pulled on her for a very weak reason. “Yellow shouldn’t have pulled his gun on you. Since when is anyone but Magenta so worried about the shapeshifters impersonating people on a planet they don’t know much about...?”

_...Frisk was spending a run reading everything there was in the Ruins about monsters, in hopes that it would teach her a way to get everyone out of the Underground. She was just setting a new book on Toriel’s kitchen table when she heard a commotion from the basement._

_Downstairs she went, and there she spotted the back of her own figure standing in front of Toriel with the toy knife. But Toriel had a slash mark across her chest, and she was looking at the fake Frisk with horror. “Do you really hate me that much? Now I see who I was protecting by keeping you here – not you, but them! Ha ha ha….”_

As Frisk swallowed, she noticed how her throat had dried from the desert. “I’m not saying it’s wrong to worry about that, but what’s with the sudden change? It’s just a few of those aliens, here to look into M-waves…. And why wasn’t I suspected of being a shapeshifter? I’m the one who was solo in the mountains where you knew there was an alien ship.”

“Don’t hate me for this.” Blue hung her head. “We do suspect you too – well, the others do – but whoever the mole is-”

“Mole?” Frisk glanced out over the desert. “Is that how we were ambushed back there? Why isn’t Sargent Bekoff asking for verbal verification of our identities then? I wouldn’t think even she’s that lax on protocol when it comes to moles.”

“She has her own ways of telling if you’re a mole, doesn’t she? She’s just good like that. As I was saying, what was Yellow supposed to think after he saw me flying and I said it wasn’t a jet pack? Whoever the mole is has been in contact with the aliens about developments that happened on base after we lost contact with you. So, yeah, we do suspect you may have been replaced with a shapeshifter too, but I really don’t think so. Sarge would have noticed, and I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“But even if you had been a shapeshifter, Blue, you were not an immediate threat. I can’t tell who’s more dangerous – the mole who gets pilots killed for taking us back to base, or the private who acts more like an overzealous new recruit in pulling his weapons on everything, deescalation and gun safety be thrown out the window.” Frisk rested a hand on Sans’s forehead. “Maybe we should have evacuated his people first and then looked for the White Soul with a more solid grasp of what’s going on.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Blue folded Sans’s jacket into a makeshift pillow and placed it under his head. “How were you suppose to know you’d find a kingdom of… frightening-looking beings who can take advantage of some really confusing physics?”

It wasn’t just that. The aliens were there looking for the M-waves on Mount Ebott whether the people there had been monsters or not, and shouldn’t they have allowed more time to explain why they had to evacuate in a culturally-salient way?

Soon, Yellow rejoined them and knelt in the sand to check on Sans. “I don’t see as much sweat. Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

“It’s a good sign.” Sans opened one eye. “Told you I’m just tired and need some rest. Just a bit longer and I’ll be up and about again.”

Finally, a real opportunity to find out what was going on with Sans. Frisk put a hand on his humerus. “Sans, you really saved us back there-”

“Nah. Couldn’t have survived without the three of you.” Sans closed his eye.

“We couldn’t have survived without you either, but how much magic did you use? You altered gravity for me and Blue, you summoned your bones and your blasters, and you helped Yellow aim too, didn’t you?”

Sans rolled onto his side so that he faced a patch of sagebrush that was next to Yellow rather than Frisk. “Sorry. Still too tired to talk about it.”

Yellow moved between Sans and the brush. “Hey White, what we’re asking is very important here! Those strange powers we suddenly had, were those you or should we be looking for a different explanation?”

“Oh, that’s what you’re asking? Yeah, Blue’s flying, Frisk’s time loop, and whatever it is you did with my magic, that was because I was there, and- I take it you didn’t know you were draining my magic?”

Frisk covered her mouth. That’s what he had to have been hiding earlier. “Sans, did you give us your magic, or did we steal your magic?”

Yellow met Frisk’s eyes. “Time loop? What time loop?”

“Later, Van.” Blue set her canteen in front of Sans. "Can’t you see poor White’s still exhausted? I want to make sure we’re not stealing his magic. Here, White. Didn’t you tell me that you need water? I didn’t see you drink anything.”

“Thanks.” Sans uncapped it. “Stealing? Nah, you weren’t stealing. How could it be stealing if you didn’t know you were taking anything? And anyway, you’re not doing it now, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“So we did steal it! I knew we had to find a way to get all four of us and the pilot out alive without relying so much on your magic.” Frisk lowered her hand back to Sans’s arm. “Look, if we-”

**“don’t.”**

“Would you tell us what he’s talking about a time loop for?” Yellow asked.

Frisk sent a glance at Yellow. “Later. When you’ll actually remember.”

"i said **don’t.** You think you could have done better. You think you could have done perfect. Is that it?” Sans pressed his phalanges against the sand and pushed himself up. “Frisk, I don’t think there’s anything we could have done for the pilot. We could have easily been sitting ducks once we bailed out. I doubt he would have asked us to jump if he thought the copter could survive. Besides, this isn’t the Underground. You only have one monster powering your time travel shenanigans, and all your messing with timelines drains my magic at that save point you made in the helicopter. Load again, and I don’t think I’ll have enough to help out. All of us will get killed. I just don’t want that to happen.”

“But someone’s still dead. If I’d left a monster dead in the Underground, how would you feel?” Frisk knee-walked toward Sans. “I know you don’t like resets and loads, but I promise I’m only trying to help. I think I have a save from when I talked Undyne into helping me find a monster who could wear the White Power Band. Could you handle it if I loaded from there? I could warn the pilot about the ambush, and we wouldn’t-”

“Explain already!”

“Sure.” Sans leaned against Frisk, still tired maybe. He stretched his legs out in the sand. “Y’know those special powers you got from hanging around me? Frisk’s is time travel. She can set up points in time that she can go back to if anything doesn’t go the way she wants it to. She calls them saves, and I keep telling her that using them too much is dangerous, but she’s always convinced that she can make things go better. It’s not worth it. There’s still a chance that her constant resets are going to cause trouble, and even if it doesn’t, she’s the only one who remembers the previous timelines. The rest of us are lucky to have so much as a feeling of deja vu, and we don’t get to do anything new or meaningful enough to change our future without Frisk just telling us what to do.”

“I’ve only ever used that power to get monsters out of that prison, or to save lives!”

“I’d hope so. I’m not mad at you.”

Yellow and Blue were huddled together near the sagebrush, whispering to each other with their eyes on Frisk. They were teammates, but could what Sans said be enough to turn them against her? To tell them that she wasn’t a good person?

“What?” Frisk held up four fingers. “I got us back into that helicopter four times. Yellow, you were a goner somewhere between two and four times. Blue, you might have died once. I couldn’t see if anyone was going to make it that run. Sans was going to die at least twice, and I did die twice. You’re welcome.”

“I’m not mad at you for saving our lives.” Sans tilted his skull skyward. “You did an incredible job setting us free, you know? I used to think I was prepared to meet a time traveler, and maybe you’re right that it is the aliens and not your time travel. But it’s not fair, you having to save the universe by yourself, and if it was me, well, I’m sure I would have given up by now.”

He was still upset, wasn’t he? If not at her, at himself maybe? But that was fine. She could fix it. “I told you, you’re not useless. You’ve been helping this whole time-”

“Do it.” Sans’s head drooped. “I’m glad you value people’s lives. Really, I am, so do it. I’ll try to remember.”

The pilot, yes, Frisk would save him. But if she was turning back time, she’d be sure to remember how Sans was affected this time around and do more to help him too. Before she reached for her save file, she wrapped her arms around Sans. “Thank you.”

_L O A D_

Frisk was back on the dirt trail with Undyne, where the monsters were pouring down the mountain. Frisk spotted RG01 and RG02, but she kept looking for Sans. “Hey, I know this might sound a little crazy, but have you ever seen Sans fight? It’s kind of scary, actually, just how much he effort he puts in when he’s actually certain there’s only one right thing to do, and I don’t think anyone can question how loyal he is to the people he cares about.”

“So what, you think that thing might choose Sans or something?”

“Yeah.” Frisk picked up the pace, keeping her eyes out for the skeleton brothers. “If it doesn’t, we can always rule out Papyrus for you.”

  
They found the skeleton brothers a little up the trail, and Sans kept his eye lights quietly on Frisk as they approached. When they were closer, he stepped toward Frisk and whispered, “What? Finally bored of your old reset point, so you made yourself a new one?”

She shook her head. “I came back to prevent an ambush and save a life. Do you remember anything?”

His eyes darted toward a tree and back to Frisk. “Not really. Just a guess – was I mad at you about something? And maybe a little mad at myself for being mad at you.”

“Yes! That was about the load just now. None of us realized that we were using your magic to escape the ambush, and someone still died anyway. I was asking if loading here would hurt you. You weren’t happy, but you understood about wanting to save a life and agreed I should do it.”

“Ha!” Undyne was taking the White Power Band back from Papyrus. “Guess I’m not losing a future member of the royal guard to this thing after all!” She bounced toward Sans and Frisk, holding up the bracelet. “Hey, punk, you tell him about this yet?”

“It looks familiar,” Sans said. “What is it?”

Grinning, Frisk pulled up her sleeve. If one good thing came out of this, at least she’d be able to see Sans’s reaction to the Power Bands this time. “An ancient artifact. One of a set of eight. There’s one for each soul color, and they each choose someone to give the power to save the world. Or universe. Or all of time and space.”

Sans did the skeleton equivalent of raising an eyebrow. “What power?”

Frisk activated her suit. “As far as we can tell, they’re mostly just fancy armors with some sort of defunct guns in the hands, but once the white one has a wearer, there’s someone who might actually get around to putting in radios and parachutes and everything that have been added into the other suits.”

“Well, _chute._ I was hoping for a power that would better _suit_ me.” Sans leaned against a tree and held a hand toward Undyne for the bracelet.

“BROTHER, THAT WAS TERRIBLE!”

“You’re smiling.”

Frisk smiled too as she watched Sans play with the bracelet before putting it on.

The moment it was around his carpal bones, it activated immediately. “Wow.”

“That is AWESOME! I knew human history was cool!” Undyne nudged Papyrus. “Hey, now that we’re on the surface, maybe we can get the royal guard some of those.”

“OH, YES! CAPTAIN UNDYNE AND THE GREAT ROYAL GUARDSMAN PAPYRUS IN HUMAN SUITS OF ARMOR. WE’LL BE VERY DASHING!” Papyrus’s smile fell. “BUT SANS IN ONE OF THOSE, WELL, HUMAN, HOW FAR ABOVE HIS NATURAL ONE HP DOES THAT ARMOR PUT HIM? I CAN’T HELP BUT WORRY.”

“What? Your brother only has one HP?” Undyne leaped onto a nearby boulder. “Frisk, we’re finding someone else to wear that awesome suit of armor. I am not sending some weakling into battle!” She stepped toward Sans, only to be showered in loose dirt.

Sans tilted his head toward Frisk. “i think that the gun works after all. it needed a bit of magic, but it doubled my ATK. try yours.”

Frisk aimed at a small rock beside the trail. From the suit’s fingers came a little red blast, which sent the rock rolling. “It works.”

“I AM GLAD IT WORKS, BUT DOESN’T DOUBLING SANS’S ATTACK STILL ONLY PUT HIM AT THREE ATK?” Papyrus wiped a tear from his eye. “NO-HO. WE GET TO THE SURFACE, ONLY FOR ME TO LOSE MY BROTHER. TRULY, THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE ENDING.”

“Only three attack doubled?” Undyne eyed Sans’s wrist, as though she could see the bracelet as part of the suit. “What sort of standards does that thing have for its wearers anyway? Frisk, you had better round up the royal guard – that’s all the monsters wearing our special armor, well except for Asgore. Every one of them is trying your little friendship bracelet on so someone can go in Sans’s place!”

Frisk nodded and hiked off. There wasn’t a monster beside Sans who could wear the Whte Power Suit, but if looking for one would make Undyne and Papyrus feel better, she’d do it. Behind her, she heard the start of Sans convincing them to let him go anyway: “I’ll be fine. Aren’t you always telling me to get my lazybones into gear and find a way to do something great in the world? Maybe you’ve finally inspired me, bro, even if I’m gonna miss you like crazy.”

Hearing such a sweet sentiment between brothers filled Frisk with determination.


	5. Chapter 5

An hour later, every member of the royal guard had tried on the White Power Band, with the same lack of results as the previous run. Once again, Frisk and Undyne tried every adult monster who was willing to fight, only for Sans to be the only one who could wear the band – they tried every adult monster, except the Annoying Dog.

Because they didn’t have to chase the Annoying Dog up and down the trail, they reached Frisk’s rental car earlier than in the previous timeline.

With thoughts of how she was killing the planet by leaving her car in idle (but she had to charge her phone in order to save the world, so maybe she could bend the rules this one time only), Frisk exchanged her cell phone for her driver’s license and joined Undyne at the trail head to wait for Sans and return the White Power Band to him. Fifteen minutes later, Undyne pointed out the skeleton brothers approaching the gravel at the bottom of the trail. “There they are. I know you want to take Papyrus’s brother with you and all that, but I can’t let you do that without me getting a chance to test his skills and give him a few pointers first. You had better take care of him so he doesn’t come home as dust, got it?”

Frisk nodded. “I promise you I will not let anything happen to Sans.”

There was a popping sound behind Frisk and Undyne, and Sans had disappeared from the trail. Cold breath tickled the back of Frisk’s ear. “Hey kiddo, do you know why I pulled you over? I’m afraid I’m going to need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

Even as Frisk shivered, she turned around with a smile on her face. She handed her license over for Sans to inspect.

“You weren't _kidding_ me." He handed it back. "Right. I told you that if you were twenty-five, you'd need you to give me something to work and you did." Sans took the Power Band back and slid it on his wrist, where, once again it activated instantly. "So all that’s left, well, you and I need to talk about this special-powers and saving-the-universe stuff. Do you mind?”

“Hey!” Undyne pointed at Sans. “Your teleportation trick may be cool, but you promised me and Papyrus that we’d spar. Don’t use the human as an excuse to get out of it, you lazy behind! What, are you scared of a friendly invitation to fight or something?”

Sans shrugged. “Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?”

Frisk blinked.  What did  that old  chicken  joke have to do with anything?  Frisk glanced up and down the mountain road, in case there was something to bring on Sans's change in topic, like a place for a lazy skeleton to cross the road and chill.

Undyne asked, “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Because it had _fowled_ up its teleportation!” Chuckling, Sans put a hand on Frisk’s shoulder. "But I’m no chicken. I promised you I’d spar, so I am going to spar. I’m just going to have a few words with the human while you and Paps find a good place for a fight.”

Sans led Frisk to the side of the road.

They found a rock that could seat them both, and joining Sans on its sun-warmed surface, Frisk batted her eyelashes at the skeleton. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

Sans turned his helmet toward Frisk. “Yeah, looks like.”

“Are you still mad?”

“Nah. Got something I wanted to ask ya.” Sans looked out over the desert. “It really is a beautiful day out here. I’m gonna have to learn some day what kind of bird that is singing.”

“I’m not a big birdwatcher, but I think that’s a chickadee.” Frisk gazed at Sans’s helmet. “There is so much I want you to be able to experience out here. All the funny shapes the clouds make as they pass overhead. The bright pinks and oranges that are different every sunset.” She waved her hand overhead. “Just how many twinkling stars you can see when you’re out in the mountains like this. When all this is over, I can bring the picnic if you want to bring your telescope.”

Sans was silent for a moment.

Was it too soon to ask him out? Frisk folded her hands on her lap. “Papyrus can come too, and all the rest of our friends. Everyone should have a chance to see the night sky.”

“Nah. I’d love to invite all our friends out for a _stellar_ night, but I don’t think the _atmosphere_ would be right. I can tell you want the two of us to have some _space_ from everyone else. Let’s invite another pair of dates and call it good.”

Frisk raised her eyebrows. Sans said yes? “Do you want to go out with me, or are you just being nice?”

“Dunno. With all the resets, you’ve known me longer than I’ve known you.” Sans looked away. “Anyway, that’s what I wanted to ask ya about. Look, when do you decide it’s okay to reset? Is it always after someone dies or the world’s about to end, or what?”

“It’s been when someone dies, or when we couldn’t free monsters from the Underground. I will not let anyone suffer if I can do anything, and that includes you with the resets, Sans.” She set her hand on the rock and watched for his reaction.

It was hard to tell with Sans’s suit on, but Frisk believed she’d gotten his attention. His helmet was pointed her way anyway.

After a moment, he scooted closer to her. “Did I ever tell you why I have code words for time travelers? Since we reached the surface, maybe. Since the runs where I’ve been able to see that you’re not some kid.”

“I’d assumed you’re just brilliant like that.” Frisk scooted closer to Sans in turn. “And this is the sort of thing you study, after all.”

Sans deactivated his suit and slid the bracelet off. “Truth is, you are not the first time traveler I’ve cared about. I only….” He stared at the road.

Frisk let him have a moment, but as his silence dragged on, she set her hand on his sleeve. “As soon as the aliens are gone, there will be no more resets. I promise.”

“Aliens?”

“The extraterrestrial kind. Don’t go spreading that around, okay?” She winked at him as she placed a finger to her lips. “Just because I know you’ll get cleared to know about them doesn’t mean they’re any less of a military secret.”

“So, uh… We gonna go to space to deal with them?” He scrunched up his eye sockets. “Not everyone can pull off a spacesuit, but I know you’re gonna _rocket_.”

Did Sans just flirt with her? Grin on her face, Frisk tapped his shoulder. “If we go to orbit, we’ll have to take a _launch_ break together sometime.”

“Heh heh. Good one.”

Frisk stood up. “I’ve got to report in to my unit, and I believe you’ve got people to spar, but I’m looking forward to setting a date for that stargazing.”

She hadn’t taken more than three steps down the road when Sans called, “Wait.”

When she turned, he’d caught up with her.

“Frisk, I wanted to ask, without any comments on resets and deja vu, or stuff set off by your own actions, has anyone been acting differently from reset to reset?”

She blinked. “You mean, like another time traveler?”

“Nah. Anyone who’s _not_ a time traveler.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “That other time traveler I mentioned, I found his notes of when things started to go wrong with time. If you really have to keep resetting, I need you to tell me right away if someone’s acting noticeably different across timelines.”

“Well, there’s Asgore and Temmie.” Frisk bit her lip. “They always seemed to know how many times I’d died since my last full reset.”

Sans stopped. His eye sockets went dark for a moment, but the lights were back in his eyes by the time he asked, “Anything else?”

She shook her head.

“Great.” Sans walked on ahead. “Let’s go talk to Asgore. And Frisk?”

Frisk fell in step with Sans. “Hm?”

“Since you're an adult, those two code words I already gave you aren't going to cut it anymore. You’re going to need my tripple-dipple-fourth secret code word.” He turned his eye lights on her.

As Sans gazed at her cheek, Frisk couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. But since he was in a better mood than he had been, she supposed she’d better humor him. “Which is?”

" _My mama is a puking toilet._ Seriously, it's important that you give me that code word when you reset from now on, whether we're still Underground or not."

  


Checking in with Sargent Bekoff, explaining the aliens to Asgore, and speaking with the President all went similarly to how they had in the previous run. The main differences were being able to tell Sans about the helicopter ride in the previous timeline, and the amount of phone battery Frisk had left when she sent her tweet.

After she and Sans found the copter that was supposed to give them a lift, they climbed in. As in the previous run, Blue and Yellow were already in the copter, suited up.

"Red!" Blue greeted.

Yellow pointed a finger gun Frisk's way.

Frisk nodded in greeting and went up to talk to the pilot. "Sargent Bekoff mentioned that one of the alien craft was spotted around here, and I can't shake the feeling that we're going to be ambushed."

"We're expecting the possibility of an ambush already. Prepare for lift-off and be ready for combat." The pilot reached for something in the controls.

Frisk returned to the cabin. They were expecting an ambush, and there was still no scenario in which they got everyone out alive before they drained Sans's magic?

"You okay? You look upset about something.” Sans was sitting on the front-most of the two cabin benches, but this time, he was wearing his White Power Suit, and Yellow was sitting in the back with Blue instead of next to Sans.

Frisk stared. What had caused those changes? Was it something she’d said about the helicopter ride? “Sans?”

The floor lifted.

Sans patted the seat next to him. “Shouldn’t you be buckling up?”

Quickly, Frisk  sat, even though she didn’t buckle herself in . “Sans, you know what you wanted to ask me when we reached the bottom of the trail?”

Sans straightened. “What about it?”

“Why did you wear your suit into the copter? Is it something I did?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you told me that Blue would be-”

“Red! White!” Yellow grabbed onto the back of the bench. “Do the both of you have weapons?”

Sans made a finger gun. “Frisk told me I’ve got one right here. I’ve already tested it out and everything.”

“Do you mean to tell me that yours actually works?” Yellow made a finger gun back at Sans. “All I can do with mine is greet people!”

"About that-"

"If we do run into aliens, it would be good idea for you to have your gun out, Yellow." Frisk leaned toward Sans. "Use one of your blasters on the alien ship if you can. Otherwise, be ready to get the pilot out of here."

He nodded.

Frisk stood. "Yellow, switch me seats. I need to talk to Blue about something."

Yellow busied himself with removing his gun from a compartment hidden behind his left calf. "Sure. I want to talk to White about his gun anyway."

"Yellow!" Blue clung to him.

"You can handle it! How did you survive boot camp? Just get your gun out, and you'll be fine." Yellow unbuckled himself and switched Frisk the back seat.

Frisk smiled at Blue as she sat beside her, but Blue cringed away from her. Frisk blinked. "Blue? Are you okay? I was just going to talk to you about Sans. White, that-"

"The UFO’s here.” Sans got out of his seat.

When Frisk glanced out the window, she saw the black saucer spinning toward them.

“Red, turn your suit on!” Yellow shouted.

As the helicopter rocked, Frisk activated her suit. “Okay, but I broke it in the fall to the Underground. I’ll need  Blue to catch me if my parachute fails.  Yellow , you’ve got Sans.”

As the helicopter rocked again, Frisk was already heading toward the door.

“You four bail out!” The pilot called.

Frisk yanked the door open and jumped.  Three. Two. One. She reached for her parachute, and nothing happened. Moments later, Blue grabbed her under her arms.

Above, Yellow had Sans in one arm and his gun out with the other. The pilot was several feet above them, but the saucer was opening fire on the empty helicopter anyway.

BOOM!

The helicopter went out in a fireball. Bits of metal flung from the scene, and a chunk of blade took out Blue’s parachute.

Frisk was dropped. She screamed.

Her scream was drowned out by the rushing of air against her suit.

Blue caught her again. “You may-”

“We have to help them!” Frisk pointed to the men above them, who were being confronted by the spaceship.

Sans was summoning bones to act as a makeshift shield against the craft’s bullets. With a single shot, Yellow took out the thin bit of metal where the saucer had its gun.

“Why would _you_ want to help _them_? You’re trying to take us all as POWs, aren’t you?” Blue flew up anyway. “You’re doing as I say, and not the other way around for once. Got it? Sorry about dropping you.”

Did Blue believe that Frisk was an alien in this timeline or something? She would have to fix that, as soon as everyone was safe. Regardless, seeing Blue showing more than her usual level of confidence filled Frisk with determination.

In the battle, a large skull was materializing in front of the spaceship. It fired, and the craft dodged. On its way away, it knocked helicopter debris toward the parachuters, and the debris raced toward Sans and Yellow.

Blue and Frisk weren’t there yet. But the pilot was.

The pilot succeeded in kicking the debris all the way from a course that would collide with anybody, and all five survivors floated safely down to the sand and sagebrush below them.

Frisk’s feet sunk into the desert, and she barely even stumbled when Blue released her.

Behind her was a click.

She turned. Blue had her gun out, though it was pointed at the desert floor at the moment.

There were two more clicks behind her,  and then a pop.

With the pop, Frisk was no longer in front of Blue. Instead, she was behind Yellow and the pilot, who had their guns pointed at the spot where she’d been standing. Sans leaned against her shoulder.

“Where’d it go?” Yellow spat.

Blue pointed a finger at Frisk and Sans.

As Yellow and the pilot turned, Frisk raised her chin. She was determined to get out of this.

“Hey,” Sans whispered. “Enough with the saves, okay?” He teleported them into a clump of sagebrush and had them bend down. “Stay here. I’m going to talk to them.”

Frisk glared at the sand. “They think I’m a shape-shifter because they’re not used to magic. They thought it was Blue last time.”

“Thanks for telling me. Try not to load, and we’ll find another way to clear things up. You’ll see.” Sans popped away.

Peering through the brush, Frisk could see the pilot lowering his gun and looking around. Yellow had his gun pulled on Sans instead already,  and Sans had his hands up .

If he got himself killed, could she still load? She had to be prepared to load right away, while she still could. She leaned forward, rustling the plant.

The pilot had his gun on her in an instant. “Come out of there!”

Slowly, Frisk raised her hands and climbed out of the sagebrush.

“Guess my rescue attempt didn’t work, huh? I might need its _troubleshooting_ manual.” Sans said.

Yellow stepped toward him. “What? I’ve got a gun on you, and you think this is a good time for puns?”

“You’re right. Heh. Since we’re in the desert, dry humor might be funnier. C’mon, new pal, they should have mentioned to you that we monsters are made of M-waves, right? No need to get _triggered_ just because I used them to help us _tumble_ out of that _weedy_ situation safely. I would never _desert_ my friends like that.” Sans started lowering his hands. “But using all that has left me kind of tired, so I need to sit down now, do you _under sand?_ ”

“Sit down, you clown!”

“Sure thing, you poet.” Sans lowered himself onto the desert floor.

The pilot glanced at Sans, but Frisk didn’t take the opportunity to lower her hands. “Let me ask,” the pilot said, “that thing that was messing with Gs, was that you or the saucer?”

“If you’re talking about me pulling you out of the helicopter and Blue being able to fly, yeah that was me. And so was Yellow’s sharpshooting and Frisk’s traveling back in time to try to warn you about the ambush.” Sans lay back in the sand. “So if you’re done accusing our friend of being an alien, I’mma take a nap.”

Yellow took his gun off Sans, and the pilot took his gun off Frisk. Although everyone put their guns away, Blue and Yellow watched Frisk as she lowered her hands, deactivated her suit, and walked over to Sans.

Frisk sat herself cross-legged in the sand. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. A bit tired, but mostly lazy this time.” He rolled toward her. “Told ya we could pull through without ya havin’ to reset.”

“Red?” Blue was standing a few feet away. “Yellow said I should ask you about whatever you were trying to tell me in the helicopter.”

Frisk's cheeks heated up, but when she glanced at Sans, he was snoring. “It’s about him.”

Several feet away, Yellow was watching them. Beside him was the pilot, who was on the phone. Calling base?

Frisk stood. “Girl talk needs a bit more privacy.”

“I didn’t see you as the type to get a new crush so-”

“You can have Yellow,” Frisk said, quietly enough that Yellow wouldn’t hear, “and I’m not just saying that so fighting over him doesn’t get in the way of our friendship.” She lead them across a yard or two of sand, just far enough that none of the guys would be able to overhear the details of their conversation.

“Thank goodness!” Blue gave Frisk a bear hug. “You are you. I was so relieved when we got a phone call saying you were alive, and I knew Sarge couldn’t be mistaken about you. But then we got to the mountain, and you of all people were suddenly on a first-name basis with a new recruit…. But that was love at first sight, wasn’t it? I told you it was possible! And also…. Sans, was it? Sans said something about you fixing the built-in gun in his suit? That didn’t make a lot of sense for you.”

That was what Blue’s lack of suspicion was about the first time round?  Not just her faith in Sargent Bekoff, but their girl talk  too? Well,  when  Sans  stopped napping in the sand, he would be glad to know that Blue’s behavior wasn’t a sign of something going wrong with time at least. Smiling, Frisk shook her head.  “ He just said I told him there was a gun, didn’t he? He was curious about the suits, so he asked me questions about them.  He was the one who figured out that the guns  still work and just need some M-waves to power them.”

“O-oh! He sounds really smart. Is he really a…. Do you need help getting him to notice you?”

“Already asked him out.” Frisk pulled out her phone, intending to show Blue the picture she took with Sans and Asgore if she still had charge, but the battery was dead. “He’s a _cute_ skeleton. Very gentle too, and even after everything he and the other monsters have been through, he’s a great support for anyone who wants to make the world a better place. I swear he can make anyone relax and maybe laugh a little. I wanted to tell you that he’s no one for you to be scared of.”

Blue's laugh was quick and breathy, and she kept glancing at Sans in his napping spot. “First aliens, now  _monsters…_ . It’s a lot. But I know he saved us, and he didn’t do anything to us  but crack jokes when we thought you both could be aliens .”

Mission accomplished. Frisk put her phone away. “I think he’ll grow on you, so I’m sticking to my right to call dibs. We should get back.”


	6. Chapter 6

They let Sans nap in the sand a few minutes longer before they trekked over to the highway.

Blue and Yellow deactivated their suits by the road. While they waited there for Green and Orange to pick them up, Frisk finally had a moment to formally introduce the Blue and Yellow Souls and Sans to each other. She introduced Blue and Yellow by their proper rank and names, Private Tiffany McKinley and Private Van Woods, respectively. When it came time to introduce Sans, she had nothing to call him but _Sans,_ or _Sans the Skeleton,_ so she hesitated.

"The name is Sans. Sans Gaster." Without bothering to deactivate his suit, Sans offered his hand to Yellow first, then to Blue (who, despite her talk with Frisk, still hung close to Yellow as she shook Sans's hand), and then the pilot.

Two things struck Frisk as odd about the introduction. First, where was the whoopee cushion? Second, Sans had a last name?

If she were to marry him, that would make her Frisk Gaster. Frisk Gaster.... She supposed she could get used to it.

"I'm Lieutenant Dominic Bonnet," the pilot said. "I'm sorry about suspecting your friend-"

The pilot had been gesturing to Frisk, but he stopped and stared at his hand.

Sans burst out laughing. "You gonna finish _voicing_ your apology?"

Chuckling, the pilot showed everyone his hand. On his palm was a clear sticker with the label _voice activated_ and an image of a person speaking. Yellow and Blue quickly checked their palms. Yellow showed them an electric plug on his palm, and Blue showed a _motion activated_ label on hers.

They laughed at Sans's prank together. Even Blue let out a chuckle.

"Of course." The pilot peeled the sticker off his palm and gestured back at the desert. "As I was saying, I'm sorry about suspecting your friend about being an alien back there." He turned toward Frisk briefly. "I am sorry, Private. I would have done this anyway, but I'll be sure to bug the higher-ups about getting you and your unit spare parachutes in those suits, in case your ever have another parachute fail you."

Frisk nodded.

The pilot turned back to Sans. "I wanted to thank you for pulling me out of the helicopter. I thought I was going to die back there."

"Don't worry about thanking me. 'Sides, it was Frisk's idea. I did tell you, time travel, right? You... uh... you didn't make it the first time, and Frisk wanted to go back to save you, even though time travel's a bit risky." Sans turned his helmet toward Frisk. "It's an easy power to abuse, but I trust her to want to do the right thing. Saving lives, helping humans and monsters get along.... So if there's any reason to worry, it's not wanting to see something go horribly, irreversibly wrong for her."

Frisk smiled at Sans as she stepped toward Blue. If she could go back and do the right thing here, she was determined that she would always go back and do the right thing in the future. She wrapped an arm around Blue and whispered, "Speaking of humans and monsters, are you okay?"

Blue nodded. From a pants pocket, she pulled out her phone. "My brother sent me a link to one of those conspiracy-theory sites he monitors. It's got a selfie of you in the mountains with two monsters-"

"What?" Yellow crowded up behind them. "Red, you know-"

"I took that under the POTUS's orders. He wanted it tweeted at the White House." Frisk smirked at Blue. "Didn't I tell you he's cute?"

Blue shielded her screen against the sun. "That is him in the blue hoodie?" Biting her lip, she turned her phone toward Sans. "White, is this you?"

"Actually, I think that's Frisk."

Blue pressed her lips together.

"Aw, c'mon. It was just a _little_ joke. Hey, who's that shorty next to Frisk?"

Blue stared at Sans.

"What? Do you think a diminutive skeleton has a _low_ tolerance for making new pals? I can't help but feel I'm getting the _short_ end of the stick here, because I've got _no body_ to stand up for a monster like me. Guess I'll have to do it myself: I'm a bit of a _lazybones,_ but I don't sweat the _small_ stuff because nothing can get _under my_ _skin."_ Sans deactivated his suit, leaving him with no protection from getting sand between the bones of his feet but his fuzzy slippers. "I just want to get along with everyone, and you can tell I'm honest about that because I'm incapable of telling _tall_ tales. So, uh, we good?"

"Yeah." As Blue laughed this time, she relaxed. "We're okay. You're just going to have to be prepared for a few questions from-"

"Tiff! Yellow! Red! And lieutenant and monster too, I guess. _I_ am arrived!" A strawberry-blond who shared Blue's freckles was leaning out of a silver mini-van's shotgun window. Blue's brother, the Green Soul.

The van pulled off into the sand, and Green flung himself from the vehicle before it had fully stopped. He crossed the sand in seconds and pulled his sister into his arms. "A big hug for you." He moved onto Yellow, ignoring Yellow's loud protests. "A bigger hug for you." He grabbed the pilot, Sans, and Frisk all at once. "And the biggest hug for all of you!"

Yellow pointed a finger at Green. "You and your girlfriend know we're supposed to shoot the aliens, right? We're not supposed to give them hugs and a big party!"

"Oh!" Green put a hand to his chest, kicking up sand as he made a show of stumbling back. "Oh! Oh! You wound me. Of course I know I'm supposed to fight them, but my NPCs need my hugs of healing. Aliens attacking monsters? This game just got a lot more interesting, and I must milk this for all it's worth."

Sans stepped toward Frisk. "NPCs?"

She shook her head. "There was a political meme about NPCs, but I don't think that's what he's talking about. Green is in charge of monitoring what the public is guessing about military secrets, and he spends a little too much time with obscure conspiracy theories."

"W.D. Gaster! We meet at last." Green grabbed Sans's hand and pumped it. He winked. "Time to introduce your model of avatar? I've got you covered."

Sans stared at him.

Yards away, a car door slammed. The Orange Soul, a tanned young woman with flawless skin and a perfect smile stepped out onto donut tracks. "Mack, why'd you give everyone hugs but me? Where's my hug? Come here. I have a kiss for...! Oh, a monster! Hi!"

Orange bounded up to Sans and whipped out her smart phone. "Selfie! Me and the converting pacifist in our unit. #monstermash!" There was a click, and the smart phone camera's flash went off.

"Don't post that!" Frisk pulled Sans away from the frame of Orange's shot before Orange could snap any more pictures. "I was only able to post under orders from President Garcia. Monsters are still a secret. Sorry about her and Green, Sans. They can be a little much. Anyway, this is the Orange Soul, Private Zelah Hart, and over that Green Soul, Private Mack McKinley. Orange, Green, this is the White Soul, Sans Gaster. You will treat him with dignity."

"What they are is a spineless coward and a hot girl who should rethink her life choices!" Yellow stepped between Sans and the two new arrivals.

Orange sniffed. "Why's it always me? I can understand Frisky doing it - Frisky complains about everyone, so don't take it personally, Sansy - but why's it always me?" She stepped around Yellow. "Come on White, he can't tell us what to do. Let's get back to base, and we can have a party, and I'll introduce you to everyone else: Sargent No-Fun, Cyan, and Magenta-" She snapped her fingers. "That's right! Red, Magenta says he's sorry that he didn't get White a gun or a parachute or anything, okay? He was more focused on all the safety tests he still wants to do for the upgrades we asked for than, sorry White, installing stuff for a soul color we thought had all died off before Research said _might_ still exist just this week."

"uh-"

"Hey, Gaster," Green was attempting to step around Yellow. "Why'd you let her call you Sans?"

Sans's sockets were dark, and he was being quiet, even for him. Green and Orange were too much for him, weren't they? "Enough! We've got to get back to base." Frisk took Sans's hand and lead him toward the mini-van, determined to give him as quiet and safe a ride to Area 51 as was possible with Orange and Green taking an interest in him. She would be giving him shotgun and driving everyone back herself.

Or so she intended, but the moment she opened the door to shotgun, she found it already occupied by the helicopter pilot, who had his feet up on the dashboard and refused to move.

If it came down to it, which was more important to save Sans from: Orange's manic driving, or Green and Orange harassing him in the back seat?

When Frisk glanced at him, there was a bright blush across his skull. His eye lights rested on their hands.

She squeezed. Under his mittens, his bones were slim and hard, and he used them to squeeze back. "I'm alright. Thanks. Actually, I've got some questions for Green, and if I can talk to him without Orange speaking over us, I'm alright answering his questions too. You'll want to be there to hear about _him_."

Frisk wasn't sure which _him_ Sans referred to, but she nodded anyway. With a wince, she said, "If we let Orange drive-"

"I am so proud of you!" Orange jumped on Frisk from behind and shoved her phone in front of her face. It had a news blurb from some major outlet or other with the picture Frisk had tweeted to the White House. The headline read: _White House Prepares for Halloween Bash with Newly-Met Tribe of Pacifists._ "I read this on the way over-"

"Weren't you driving?" Frisk did her best to frown at Orange with Orange still leaning on her shoulders.

Orange swiped up, which displayed all three paragraphs of the article on her phone. "They said that you stopped a war between humans and- well, they couldn't say monsters, but really _monsters,_ by _relaxing_ and _having fun_ and _acting like a_ _pacifist._ I know you're not, but I'm glad you showed Sansy here how great it is to be one! We'll plan the celebrations on the way back - and we should find a way to invite the aliens! I'm sure they'll calm down and stop their crazy experiments if they can get to know us a little better."

Frisk wished that beating the aliens was that easy, but it worked for the monsters, didn't it? Maybe she shouldn't judge Orange's plan too harshly. "You can plan later. You're driving us back to base first."

"Blue's doing that." Orange opened the mini-van's back door. Afterward, she climbed into the back seat and patted a spot beside her. "Sansy!"

Sans shoved his hands into his pockets. "It's just Sans."

Frisk shot Orange a dirty look. Did she not see her holding Sans's hand? She gave Sans's mitten a quick squeeze. "Wait for me. I'm going to make sure that she drives and the two of us get to talk to Green on the road."

"'kay."

Blue, Yellow, and Green were making their way through the sand. Yellow and Green both had tussled hair and freshly-disheveled clothing, but they left each other in piece as they approached the van. Instead, Green was taking the opportunity to hold Blue's phone away from her. "Come on, sis. You know you're my favorite! And it's just a little adjustment to your code is all."

Frisk held out a hand. "Phone. Now."

"Spoilsport." Green handed Blue's phone over and lurched off to the car.

Blue reached for her phone. "Thanks-"

"Trade you for the keys." Smirking, Frisk hid Blue's phone behind her back.

Blue lowered her hand to her side. She shuffled a boot through the sand. "I'd thought you'd want to sit by White."

"I thought you'd want to sit by Yellow." Frisk winked. "What do you say we make Orange drive?"

"Orange?" Blue paled.

Frisk couldn't blame her. She didn't much like the idea of someone who didn't believe in speed limits or staying one on side of the double yellows behind the wheel either. "Or we could ask the pilot, but it's not as proper for us to ask someone who's actually in the Air Force to drive us Army folks to the base they're letting us share."

Blue glanced through the shotgun window. "He's asleep."

Frisk confirmed this with a glance of her own. Her brow twitched. Was the pilot that tired while he was flying the copter? "Orange it is then. Keys."

Slowly, Blue pulled a fob from her pocket and handed it over. "Can't we ask Green to drive?"

Frisk beckoned Blue and Sans to follow her to the mini-van. "Green has to do his job comparing those conspiracy theories against what actually happened with me and Sans, and we should probably get those of us who just survived a helicopter explosion medically checked over before any of us drive." Frisk tossed the keys at Orange. "Orange, you have to drive us back. Blue, Yellow, you're in the pilot seats, and the rest of us are on the back bench."

Orange grumbled, but everyone moved around.

Frisk sat on one side of the back bench, Green sat on the other, and Sans was seated between them. Frisk shot Sans a grin before the van lurched forward. The sudden movement forced them backward into their seats, and through the windows was no longer desert but solid orange.

"You're not handling this glitch so well. Have one of my excellent healing hugs!" Green wrapped his arms around Sans, who was covered in slime and looking really tired.

This was more of Sans's magic being used, wasn't it? Frisk grabbed the seat in front of her and leaned forward to shout, "Stop the car!"

Orange slammed the brakes. As they skid for a good minute, the desert became discernible again: sand, scatterings of small plants, and the familiar fence and guard stations of Area 51. "Hey, we're here in record time! I hope none of you lost your IDs with the helicopter."

And somehow, they'd still arrived alive after that little speed stunt. Frisk made a mental note to chew Orange out later, but for the moment, she checked on Sans.

Sans had his skull down on Green's shoulder, one eye socket cracked open, looking at something above him. "Thanks for that."

"No problem." Green unbuckled Sans's seatbelt and lifted him into his arms. "I'll carry you inside. I'd been wondering if I'd ever fight beside someone delicate, but you've got only one HP? Wow. Don't be distressed: I will stick by you and do the same again every time you need it."

"Sans?" Frisk unbuckled her own seatbelt and scooted closer.

"I'm good. Don't worry about me." He closed his eyes.

She frowned. "Green, did something happen to Sans?"

Green nodded to a metal box of a first aid kit lying on the floor between the pilot seats. "Would you mind picking that up and giving it to Orange so she can do her job?"

The first aid kit was spotted in something white and powdery that had a trickled trail from Sans's legs. Was that monster dust?

Frisk reached for her last save.

"Don't load." Sans grabbed Frisk's shoulder, apparently not quite asleep. "Green got my HP up. Ten out of one. I'm fine."

Frisk let go of her save file, but she couldn't help but noticed the widened eyes Green was staring at her with. She stared back. No comment on Orange's speed. Talk of HP. And it seemed that _loading_ meant something to Green. Did the weirdo actually know something about what was going on? As though he'd been studying M-waves or something.

He wasn't the mole, was he? If he was, at least he was being a bit more responsible with his experiments this time by not letting his, and Frisk hated to even think the word, but his _specimens_ die, but how could Frisk chance letting an alien keep experimenting with Sans at all?

She stood and reached out with open arms. "I'll take him. You get the med kit."

"He's not really W.D. Gaster, is he?" Green settled Sans into Frisk's arms. "Who is he?"

"A scientist." Frisk climbed carefully out of the mini-van. "A better one than those lowlifes who disregard things like safety and informed consent will ever be, and you'd know his name if you'd bothered to listen to me introduce the two of you earlier."

"Did you mean to create true Artificial Intelligence?" Green set the med kit on one of the pilot seats and opened it up.

What an odd question, but if the aliens were there to study M-waves, did they mistake the monsters for AI? Frisk flattened her lips. She could just chew Green, if this was an imposter, out for his experiments, and she couldn't deny that the option was appealing. Or perhaps she could play dumb and maybe get more information out of the alien - what exactly their plans for future experiments were, or what they'd done with Green.

As she wiped a bit of slime off Sans's skull, she knew what she had to do. If she got the information first, she could still chew Green's imposter out later, and the information would make it easier to avoid resets, just as Sans wanted. "What do you mean?"

"Me. I'm self-aware. Amazing, isn't it?" Green fished out some gauze and some sanitary wipes. "I promise I will not break your program, but can I ask you something? Why does my universe exist?"

"Sorry. What?" Frisk couldn't help but stare at him.

"I'm self-aware," he repeated. "I know this universe is just a big sandbox in which you're following me around, watching to see what I'd do, but was I meant to be self-aware, or just some clever bit of code? I'm not going to put up a fuss or break the world or anything, and I am grateful for the awesome new ability to heal up the other characters. I just want to know why we're here. What does my life mean?"

Frisk glanced across the desert. "By _sandbox,_ you don't mean the local ecosystem, do you?"

Green wasn't an alien, was he? This was just another one of his crazy theories (though perhaps one with a grain of truth to it if he knew about HP), and an existential crisis on top of it.

"You're not a dev, are you? But you came from whatever world is outside this one as some sort of observer or player. You've got to be: I heard White talking to you about loads." Green pulled Sans's sweat pants up to his patellas and started cleaning out the little nicks and dents Sans had in his tibias and fibulas. "I'm one of the NPCs, but I'm sentient. I'm the only one who is." As Green switched to the gauze, he glanced at Frisk. "If you can't tell me what this universe is about, then can I ask a favor instead? I know the other NPCs aren't intelligent, but I hate seeing them get hurt. Tell the devs if they ever want to shut this simulation down, make sure I go out first so I don't have to see what the others go through."

Simulation theory. Green had spoken about it before, until he realized that no one else was interested. Dead wrong about Frisk's loads of course, but she didn't suppose.... If Green remembered time loops when no one else could, what would that have been like? Waking up one day to find that it was the day before, the same things happening again and again, and everyone else denying it, like an unintentional form of gaslighting. If she were in that situation, maybe she would have gone looking for answers too and found some nutty theories that made as much sense for her abnormal situation as anything else. Green couldn't have been affected that way by the resets, could he? By Frisk's resets, by Flowey's before hers, and perhaps, as long as Sans hadn't been talking about Flowey when he mentioned another time traveler, then by the resets belonging to Sans's time traveler as well. Frisk's guts churned. "Green, I don't suppose you remember living the same stretches of time over and over?"

Laughing, Green packed up the med kit and put it in the pouch on the back of the driver's seat. "Don't worry about that. I just want to know what it means for you out there."

Green could remember, couldn't he? A tear ran from Frisk's eye. "It's not a simulation. I wouldn't do all this if it were. You are the third person I've known to be suffering because of the resets, and if you're affected, I'm sure there are more people who are. Is it wrong of me to use them even to try to stop the end of the world? I'm not very effective anyway. I haven't even been able to keep Sans from getting exhausted again because we've used up all his magic and still just barely managed to get everyone to the border of our base."

The mini-van door was slammed shut.

"Hey," Green stepped toward her. "I know what I said, but you don't have to feel this sorry for us AIs. Is suffering not part of life out there too? How do you find the meaning in anything if you aren't allowed to hurt sometimes?"

"You're not an AI."

In Frisk's arms, Sans was starting to stir. Green put his hand on one of Sans's, and Sans's eyes opened. Sans blinked. "Told ya I'm fine. Twenty out of one. Hey, are you crying?"

"You can put him down now. Do you want a hug?" Green held his arms open for Frisk.

Frisk took care to put Sans down on the asphalt so his slippers didn't sink into the sand. "You're right. We really need to talk to Green together."

She checked for cars, and she might have lead them across the road then and there for a bit more privacy if it hadn't been for a shout from the checkpoint: "Hey, I still need to see ID for you three-"


	7. Chapter 7

Several yards away, Yellow plunked his elbow against the guard box. "What did I just prove to you? That skeleton doesn't have his ID yet, but he is one of us and has clearance. Blue!"

As Blue held her phone up toward the guard, the guard eyed Sans, Frisk, and Green. "I still need to see ID for you two, and I need that skeleton over here to check its face against the photo."

"He is not an it!" Yellow pointed his finger. "Do you want me to report you for misconduct?"

"How am I supposed to know what gender that thing is?" The guard gestured to himself. "Do I look like a forensic scientist? Just get him over here so I can check the face."

Frisk reached into her pocket for her wallet and ID and started walking toward the guard box. "We should let him check us before Yellow starts a fight. Are you two coming?"

Sans and Green followed Frisk, but Yellow was already jabbing a finger at Blue's phone. "Do you see this? It calls him a _him_ right here. Can you not read? Are you some sort of-"

"Yellow!" Blue lowered her phone. "I am so sorry about him. It's just that White just saved our lives, and I know Yellow is grateful for that. Calling you stupid was out of line, but if you could not insult our friend...?"

"You're all ganging up on me," the guard said.

Frisk glanced back at Sans and Green. Green was looking toward the van's shotgun door, where Orange was talking to the pilot, and running his fingers through his hair, as though in a sad attempt to get its army length up into spikes, but Sans returned Frisk's glance. She smiled. "It's going well. I'm sure we'll get monsters and humans living peacefully alongside each other in no time."

"Sounds nice." Sans met Frisk's eyes. "You seem a lot more relaxed than I've seen you. Glad to see it."

They gazed at each other a moment longer. When Frisk finally looked away, Green was ahead of them, collecting his ID back from the guard and tapping Blue with his phone. Green and Blue became absorbed in whatever Green was showing his sister, but Yellow kept his eyes on the guard box as Frisk and Sans approached it. "Blue, your phone."

"Sorry." Blue pulled herself away from her brother's phone to show hers to the guard, who peered at it, then peered at Sans.

The guard nodded. "The skeleton's clear. Your ID?"

Frisk handed her ID over. Once her identity had been confirmed, or as confirmed as it could be with alien shapeshifters running around, she stepped away from the guard booth to find Orange in Sans's face again.

"-he right?" she asked. "Did you exhaust yourself doing that?"

Sans stepped back. "I-"

"I'm the team medic. I need to know these things!" Orange grabbed Sans's wrist and pulled him toward the van, tossing the keys to Green on the way.

Hearing Orange continue to demand answers from Sans, it seemed that Orange wasn't going to agree to drive again any time soon, and with the burst of magic that happened last time she was behind the wheel, perhaps that was for the best. Frisk would just have to find a time to talk to Green with Sans later.

Sargent Bekoff was waiting to meet them in a narrow hallway on-base, her gray-streaked hair done up perfectly into a regulation bun that, in Frisk's opinion, made her look like a war-weary Princess Leia. She waved Yellow, Orange, Green, and Blue into a briefing room ahead of them. "Be ready to discuss the ambush."

Frisk attempted to peek into the briefing room, but Blue was closing the door behind herself. "We'll want to talk to Magenta about Sans's equipment. Are he and Cyan here?"

"It's fine," Sargent Bekoff said. "I've spoken to him. Besides, our new recruit is a civilian, is he not? He's here-"

"Actually, I've been a sentry for-"

"White Soul, I don't believe we've met." Sargent Bekoff held out her hand. "I'm Lorraine Bekoff, Sargent in the US Army."

"Sans Gaster. I'm a sentry for-"

"As I was saying, Mr. Gaster, you're here as a consultant. We'll keep you and your people away from the aliens, so there's no cause to worry." Sargent Bekoff peeled a sticker off her palm and crumpled it into a ball. "Just keep your jokes to yourself. They have no place in a secure facility."

A consultant. Frisk schooled her expression to reflect the respect due, if grudgingly, to her commanding officer. When Frisk had gone looking for a white soul, she knew that she wasn't recruiting the usual way, from among the ranks of the US Army, and she knew that whoever she found to bring onto the team would be acting only as a consultant. But was that any reason for Sargent Bekoff to keep cutting Sans off mid-thought?

"Right." Sans eyed the door. "If that's all, I'mma go in and set up a time to be a _consultant_ for Green. When works for you, Frisk?"

Frisk rested a hand on Sans's shoulder and met Sargent Bekoff's eyes. "If I may, I know he wants to stop the aliens from destroying everything, and he's capable of doing much more than just consulting on M-waves."

"He's a civilian."

"I'm not. Sentries are-"

"You've made your feelings on the matter clear," Sargent Bekoff said to Frisk, "but monsters do not have the experience we do with aliens. We cannot throw them into battles for our planet the moment they're released from their underground prison. That would be a waste."

Sans's eye sockets went dark, but he said nothing.

"You don't have to rub it in his face that he doesn't have much experience with aliens. He's still served as a sentry, and he's dealt with some pretty weird stuff as such. Why shouldn't we give him the same respect as any other member of an allied military? Besides, you should hear what Yellow and Blue have to say about him fighting off the alien ship that attacked us." As Frisk silently challenged Sargent Bekoff to contradict her, her heart filled with determination.

The lights returned to Sans's eyes. "It's okay, Frisk. Wasn't she gonna talk about that with everyone? I'm sure she'll come 'round."

"It's not that." Sargent Bekoff held up a finger. "I heard from the airmen who evacuated Mount Ebott. They said that there are less than two thousand of your people. That qualifies monsters for the endangered species list, and if you're here, it is absolutely my job to ensure you won't get killed. This is for your own good."

For the monster's own good still robbed them of their freedom. Frisk stuck up her chin. "He won't get killed. I guarantee it!"

At Frisk's outburst, Sargent Bekoff stepped to the door and placed her hand on the knob. "We have to keep him as a consultant, but if you feel that way, you can keep an eye out for him whenever he's around the rest of the Souls. Magenta might be right that it's one of the six Souls who knew about the change in plans for Green and Orange working with the Japanese. Go in, and tell them that the meeting will start as soon as I get a cup of coffee."

Sargent Bekoff opened the door for them and squeezed past them for the hallway.

For a moment, Frisk wished that Sargent Bekoff had opened the door a little earlier, so that the other Souls witnessed some of what had happened for themselves. Surely, someone would have come to Sans's aid with her. At least Yellow for sure. He always was quick to act when he saw someone being treated unfairly. But then, how would Sans feel if all the other Souls had seen him being pushed around?

Sans was already inside. He went to the front row of two rows of folding chairs. The front row was four chairs long and consisted of Blue against a brick wall, Green next to her, and two empty seats next to the walkway. In the front row, Sans snagged the empty seat next to Green and patted the last remaining seat.

As Frisk went to join them, she was not the only one who did so: in the room's back corner were Magenta, who was a tall man with glasses and lean muscles; and Cyan, who was a big-boned woman with bushy black hair; and Magenta and Cyan were getting out of their seats and heading toward Sans.

"Magenta, Cyan, let me introduce you." Frisk hurried over before Magenta could start making accusations of Sans being an alien, or Sans being a monster spy, or anything of the sort.

"I can do it myself!" Magenta dropped something on Sans's lap that looked suspiciously like the purple parachute from Magenta's suit. "Hey, White, I am the Magenta Soul, Private Ernesto Aguilar. _I_ am the one you want revenge on for not having a parachute. Instead of taking your revenge, let me install the best equipment for you and make sure your suit is up to snuff."

"Uh.... Okay?" Sans met Frisk's eyes, used the bone above his eye socket to mimic raising a brow, and tilted his head toward Magenta.

Sans was spared Magenta's worst accusations? By Magenta's projecting his own tendency to fantasize about revenge, but still, the introduction could have gone much worse.

Frisk took her seat. "Sans, this is Magenta, who accuses everyone of being out to get him the first dozen times he meets them, and this is Cyan, the youngest soldier in this unit."

Cyan offered Sans her hand. "Private Kalia Faletau. If the monster royalty ever want to visit Oahu, I can show them the places that only the locals know about."

Magenta gaped at Cyan, and Sans got as far as taking her hand and offering her his name before Magenta stopped.

"I thought you were on my side!" he whined. "What do we know about monsters, really? Didn't humans trap them under that mountain? They could hate you. They could want revenge. And- And aren't they made of the stuff that blew up in Japan? They could be even more dangerous than the aliens. White could be here as a spy. I thought you wanted to help me observe the monsters, not- not take them to your home turf!"

And there were the worse accusations. Frisk narrowed her eyes. "Magenta-"

"Don't talk about our _new pal_ like that!" Yellow was sitting behind Frisk, and he reached forward and grabbed the back of Sans's chair. "You really want to know what we know about them? They're Earthlings, like the rest of us. One of these Power Bands was meant for-"

"That doesn't mean they don't want revenge!"

"I don't want revenge. It won't undo anything that's been done. And besides, monsters should be fine now." Sans offered his hand to Magenta. "But if it makes you feel better, I can promise that I won't take any revenge, and we can shake on it. And I'm not offering that lightly - I hate making promises."

Magenta looked at Sans's hand as though Sans was offering him a venomous snake. "It's not about undoing what's been done. It's about showing everyone that they can't get away with messing with you. Don't tell me you don't want that."

"Dear," Cyan rested her arm on Magenta's shoulder, "if the monsters are more dangerous than the aliens, doesn't that mean they're also dangerous to the aliens?"

"Exactly! If the aliens think so too, they might blow up planet Earth just to kill all the monsters if we don't do something about them first!"

Frisk shared a look with Sans, who leaned in until his breath was on her cheek.

"You don't think that's how it went from aliens investigating magic to aliens chasing down monsters and firing on military helicopters, do you?" he asked.

"I will not let them destroy all time and space. You'll see." Determined, Frisk straightened in her seat. "Magenta, if we let the aliens decide that monsters have no right to live simply because they might be able to harm them, then when should we expect them to decide the same thing about the human race?"

Magenta hesitated. "It will buy some time-"

"We are not killing monsters-"

"I didn't say we're going to do that. Aren't monsters dangerous to humans too? _I_ am keeping an eye on White and taking notes of everything monsters are capable of, and then-"

"They are not our enemies." Frisk crossed her arms. "They want to rejoin humanity on the surface as equals. That's it. What we are going to do is to trust Sans to help us stop the aliens, and then we will tell the politicians what good allies the monsters are so they can be allowed to do the things anyone should be allowed to do."

"Do what you want, Red, if you are Red. I'm going to take very thorough notes on the monsters' behavior, and when I've got enough that even an idiot like you can see the patterns, I'll show you. I will prove you wrong, and all of you will believe me." Magenta wrapped an arm around Cyan. "Kal will be helping me."

Frisk glared at Magenta.

Cyan leaned into Magenta and whispered something in his ear.

He smiled. "Or you could do that, yeah. Yeah, actually, that's a good idea. You know I like the way you think." Magenta pecked Cyan on the lips and returned to the corner. From his seat, he kept his eyes on Sans. "White, you're still coming with me for your suit after this, 'cause if you think some greenhorn can come in and hurt any of my friends, I'll be the one taking revenge."

Cyan lingered behind with Frisk and Sans. As Sans turned his head toward Green, Frisk gave Cyan the sternest look she could muster. "We are not hurting them."

"Of course not. President Garcia had you help him prepare to use them for his re-election, right?"

Frisk's skin crawled. Was that what the selfie was about? Some political campaign? "Is that what that was?"

"Naturally. Halloween is a convenient excuse to have a photo of monsters while the populace don't know that monsters are real, but it's also only two days from Election Day this year, and good publicity can give the President a final boost." Cyan leaned on the back of the chairs. "Of course, how good the publicity is depends on how the public perceives monsters at the time, and there are some real opportunities there for anyone who's standing up for monster rights to get noticed-"

"It's the right thing to do, isn't it?" Blue tilted her head back toward them. "Standing up for them. Mack and I are thinking of ways to get their existence declassified so they can live normal lives, if they want them. If we let you in, will you help regardless the publicity?"

Cyan put a hand to her chest. "If you do, I'll be in charge because not all publicity is good publicity, you know. We've got to be careful not to push for too much too fast. No way I'm ruining my career over the monsters. Do you think I want to be like Bekoff? A few years away from retirement, and still only a sargent-"

"A sargent who commands a rather unique unit stationed at Area 51, if I may remind you." Sargent Bekoff stood at the front of the room with her cup of coffee. "Get back in your seat, Cyan. Green, Orange, get off your phones. Couldn't the Power Bands have chosen better soldiers? I ought to discipline you."

Frisk set the example in sitting properly, though her thoughts wandered to the various ways in which Sargent Bekoff could have a team with better discipline. For starters, actually doing more to enforce regulations than saying _I ought to discipline you_.

Beside Frisk, Sans was scooting toward her. "Hey," he whispered, "Green says that mess time is a good time for us to talk. That work for you?"

She nodded, but she kept her eyes forward.

Sargent Bekoff nodded at the rows of chairs. "Let's hear it, one at a time: Red, White, Yellow, Blue, what happened?"

Frisk smiled. Now was her chance. "After-"

Green yelped and flung the Green Power Band to the carpet. "Get them off!"

Frisk stared at the green bracelet on the floor. "Green?"

Her own bracelet tightened around her wrist. Her hand throbbed, and she was yanked by the Red Power Band to the ceiling, where she hit her head against someone else. She wriggled. Her elbow hit Sans's ribs, and her arm got pinned against his side as something snaked around her arm.

"How come he knew this was going to happen, and you didn't?" Sans's breath turned from cold to freezing on Frisk's cheek. "Is there anything you forgot to tell me?"

"I thought he was remembering resets, but this is the first time I've lived through this." Frisk tugged at her restraints, but she remained bound.

Sargent Bekoff climbed on a chair. "I can't see what's tying you up."

"It wasn't me. It wasn't me." Blue was shaking somewhere behind Frisk.

Green dashed around Sargent Bekoff's chair. "Sis, if you're someone's avatar right now, give me a hint, and I'll get you down from there! You too, Red, if you're still here."

Frisk grit her teeth and pulled at the bindings with all her might. She would get free, and then she'd free everyone else. She was determined.

Sans nudged her with his foot. "I'd like to _hang out_ sometime too, but we're both a little _tied up_ right now, so would you mind not saving? Someone's already using my magic to keep us bound." He lowered his voice. "Besides, Green and Blue are acting a little strange, don't you think?"

Frisk wriggled her bound, stinging hand, but all she could touch was skin or mitten. "Can't you do anything to get us down?"

 **"Earthlings."** The voice boomed from the walls. **"M-wave weapons are banned under the Second Treaty of Hiidsgazo, and our scientists have confirmed a large cache of living, engineered M-wave bio-weapons recently retrieved from Mount Ebott. They have all been intercepted, confiscated, and destroyed."**

They'd killed the monsters? Frisk writhed. "You didn't have to do that!"

Pop!

Instead of it being Sans by Frisk's side, it was now Magenta, who was muttering something under his breath.

"Welp," said Sans, from somewhere behind Frisk. "So much for teleporting us out of these sickos' grasp."

Frisk kept twisting back and forth. "They aren't bio-weapons. They're living beings who were born that way, and it's despicable that you went after them for that!"

**"Do you suppose we're idiots? We compared the genetic material in the weapons' dust to the rest of the human race. You look very different, but there was only one major difference between humans and monsters: the amount of M-waves in your bodies. The amount of M-waves in the monsters was beyond natural. We know you rounded up those of your species with the most ability to absorb the energy and locked them in the locations with the most M-waves until they mutated enough to become what they are today."**

Everyone created a cacophony of accusations: some toward the aliens, some toward fellow teammates suspected to have been replaced with a shapeshifter, and in Magenta's case, one toward Sans for the comment he made about his magic powering the bindings.

Over all the noise, Sargent Bekoff handed a chair to Green and somehow made herself heard. "Unless you want me to think you're the mole, you will get up here and help me untie them."

"Neither of you can reach. I'll untie us." Seeing how Frisk's arm was no longer bound to Sans's, she reached up for her wrist. A glowing, magenta string dropped onto the carpet.

As Frisk stared at it, Green placed his chair next to it and climbed up to Frisk. "It can't be a fun simulation if you get yourself tied up twice in a row and even have to pretend to be surprised by things again. Give me a hint here. What am I supposed to do?"

Frisk stared at Green instead of the string.

**"Sargent Bekoff, you will retrieve all the information you have on the M-wave weapon systems around your soldiers' wrists and surrender the Green Soul to come with us as well, or else we shall consider the United States of America's creation of M-wave weapons an act of war on the universe. We will destroy every human within US borders."**

So the aliens did recognize national boundaries. What a cold comfort.

Frisk found the bindings with her free hand and felt around them. They were smooth and seamless, and when she tugged at them, there was hardly any give. "What did I do last time?"

Green nodded to Sargent Bekoff. "Well, we all helped her try to negotiate with the aliens for a bit, and then she went and got the reports on the Power Bands. We were taken to a spaceship, and you chewed the aliens out. You were killed over it before they even released us from the bindings to try to corral us into separate labs. I tried to revive you. I couldn't. And Yellow.... Yellow is terrifying with White's magic. He killed easily twice as many aliens as White, Blue, and Cyan combined before the simulation reloaded."

A reload. A reset? There was a reset, and Frisk didn't remember anything? Was she even the one who reset? No, there had to be something else going on. Even if she'd lost the ability to reset, wouldn't she still remember other people's resets like Flowey did?

"You alright? You know you can count on me to get you through the simulation."

Frisk closed her eyes and reached for her save file. "Before I load, did any of the aliens look like they were going to do the right thing because I talked to them?"

"No."

If the aliens weren't going to do the right thing on their own, someone had to stop them. At least, if anyone could.

But if no one could, was there any value in surrender?

Brushing the thought aside, Frisk pulled up the familiar black void with her special menu options and reached for the load button. It faded away before she reached it. The other options disappeared as well.

She opened her eyes. Green was still standing on the chair, a worried look in his eyes.

Frisk turned her head, attempting to see the backs of her teammates' heads over her shoulder. "Is Sans alright? Last time I couldn't load, it was because he was exhausted."

Last time she couldn't load, she was still able to go back to an earlier save. The menu options didn't just totally disappear.

Green climbed off the chair as Sargent Bekoff was leaving the room. Frisk worked her fingers under the bindings and tugged. All she got for her efforts was a weird sound from Sans, and then Cyan telling her to use a pocket knife to cut them free. As if Frisk had a pocket knife.

Frisk reached for her save again. Gone. She squirmed. "Let. Us. Out!"

Something tugged gently at the sleeve of Frisk's bound arm, and moments later, smooth bone pressed against the trapped wrist. "If you can't load, then completely reset. I want my brother back."

The one time things got bad enough for Sans to ask for a reset was the one time Frisk physically could not. She tried again though. And again. She couldn't even find her way to the void anymore. "I can't!"

Everyone was counting on her, and she couldn't do a thing. For the heck of it, she tried to save. She couldn't even do that. "I can't do anything." As Frisk lowered her head toward the floor, she noticed that Magenta's parachute was gone, but what of that now? Sure, the magic binding them reminded her of the magenta magic Muffet used in battle with her web, and sure, Magenta could have done something to the parachute, but whether Magenta was the mole or not, they were still trapped. There was still nothing Frisk could do.

Pop.

Sans was back at Frisk's side in Magenta's place. He looked at her with empty eye sockets, as if she'd done something wrong.

"I'm sorry." Frisk raised her free hand to wipe at her eyes, but Sans intercepted her hand.

His mitten was gone, so he was able to lock his fingers in hers and squeeze her hand gently, though his eye lights were still gone. "Frisk, you **gotta** stay determined."

"I can't load. Do you have any other ideas how to get out of this?"

He blinked. When he opened his eyelids, his eye lights were back. "I know this looks bad, but, uh, most of the team welcomed me in, and that filled me with more hope than I've had in a while, you know? It's enough that I think I can give you a boost, but you've got to be determined. Look, why don't you think about how much you want to go back and make things right, and try resetting again? Take it slowly if you need to. I'll be right here with you."

She owed him that much. Her teammates, the monsters, everyone was counting on her, and she owed it to them to not give up. She took a deep breath.

When she closed her eyes, she was able to get back into the void. Her options were there as big white buttons, but they were flickering.

She reached for the reset button. It started to fade. "No!"

"Frisk, stay determined." Sans's hand reached out from beside Frisk and held onto the button. It stayed.

Frisk mustered up all her willpower and reached forward.

_R E S E T_

Frisk sat up on a bed of golden flowers, sunlight streaming into the Underground from the hole above. Reflexively, she reached for her save menu.

It wasn't there.


	8. Chapter 8

Frisk shouted into her hands. Why her? Had she done something wrong?

And if she wasn't in control of resets anymore, who was? One of the aliens maybe? Green did say that the reset happened after they'd been killing aliens.

If the aliens were in control, how was Frisk going to get anyone through this alive? She'd get the monsters out, and... they'd go with the Air Force and still die before they could ever see the stars. Or she could keep the monsters here, and... a shapeshifter would come and slaughter them all, wearing her face.

She lay on her stomach in the golden flowers, where she rested her face near the damp soil to sob. Her fingers dug into the earth, so when she wiped her puffy eyes, it was with dirty hands that she did.

"Golly, I've never seen you cry before. What's wrong? Did everyone **die**?" Flowey bore his fangs into Frisk's face.

"Go away, Asriel."

He stuck his tongue out. "You promised your old pal Flowey that when the universe was saved, there'd be no more resets. But you reset, and you're just lying around and crying. I think you owe me an explanation. Where's that determination of yours?"

Frisk shot him a glare. There wasn't much heat in it.

Flowey grinned. "You know, there's something I want to try."

FILE 1 SAVED

Up from the ground rose little white pellets, which circled above Flowey's head and brought the darkness of an encounter with them.

Frisk got to her feet.

"Oh, don't worry. I won't leave you dead. I still need you to go save the universe, after all. And besides, I can't wait to see what you do this time. But this is going to be FUN." Giggling, he shot the pellets toward her.

She dodged.

The pellets surrounded her. She dropped to her stomach, but they hit her in the back anyway.

When she died, she was in the void with only blackness surrounding her. No menu.

FILE 1 LOADED

Flowey cackled. "You should see the look on your face! ' _Help me, I'm scared! Somebody, help me!'_ Go ahead, I dare you to cry out for help."

Why should she call out? Toriel was coming anyway, wasn't she? Frisk stood silently, staring at Flowey.

"Hey, play along! Call out for help."

Frisk glanced toward the spot where she knew there was a door to the rest of the ruins, but despite the sunlight that had to be streaming in from the surface, the encounter magic rendered it too dark to see anything. _Stay determined._ She breathed. "Flowey, there was a load before I reset. Were you the one who did it?"

"If it was me, why would I have to test out whether I can load with you? Now call out for help already!" Flowey pelted Frisk with an endless spiral of bullets. She managed to dodge some, but they hit one at a time until her HP was down to zero.

Still no menu. But she had to be able to reset, didn't she?

FILE 1 LOADED

"You know what? Fine. Have it your way. Go. At least this way I might get a reaction out of you." Flowey burrowed himself into the ground.

What was Flowey expecting her to react to exactly?

Never mind that. Her powers were gone, and she didn't know how she could save anyone without them. At least, not without Sans. He'd have to know something to do, so she had to find him.

Frisk trudged through the first door of the Ruins and crossed through the hall. She reached the looming structure that threw shadows onto the ground, but there was no Toriel. Did Flowey do something to her?

She pressed ahead, solving the first two puzzles easily. When she got to the puzzle with the bridge of spikes, she paused in the eastern room to remind herself of the route through.

When it was time for her to proceed, she encountered no froggit. She bit her lip. Where was everyone? "Hello? My name's Frisk. Is anyone here?"

As Frisk kept going through the Ruins, there was nothing to greet her but the sound of her own voice echoing off stone. Because it was so quiet, she kept her eyes out for piles of dust. The Ruins were dirty, but it all seemed to be grime, overgrown plant life, and debris from the crumbling structures. No monster dust.

She solved puzzle after puzzle without encountering a single monster or their remains, but as she got closer to the spider bake sale, she heard someone ahead repeatedly saying _ZZZ._

Napstablook. The ghost was pretending to sleep on the pile of red leaves between Frisk and the next rooms, as usual.

Finally, someone else was here.

With a smile, Frisk bent beside Napstablook and attempted to shake her friend awake. Her hand went right through. Napstablook got up anyway, and Frisk had to dodge from tears as Napstablook started the darkness of an encounter.

"Hi, my name's Frisk. I was just looking for someone, but you seemed to be so down."

Napstablook looked away. "Just like my neighbor. You want to cheer someone up by wrestling. Really not feelin' up to it right now. Sorry."

Frisk gave a patient smile.

As Napstablook started crying again, the tears flew Frisk's way. She dodged them again, and when there was a break in the waterworks, she widened her smile. "It's okay. We don't have to wrestle. You seem like such a sweet spirit, and I'd like to be your friend."

"Heh." Napstablook's mouth twitched. "Can I show you something?"

Frisk gave a very firm nod.

"Let me try..." Napstablook focused a fresh wave of tears upward into a hat. "I call it _dapper blook_. Do you like it?"

"You'll have to give me some fashion tips sometime."

"Oh gee...." Napstablook let the encounter fade away, leaving them in the Ruins hallway with the pile of leaves. "I usually come to the Ruins because nobody's around... but today I met somebody nice.... Oh, I'm rambling again. I'll get out of your way."

Napstablook started to fade.

"Wait!" Frisk stepped into the leaves. "Are the Ruins normally this empty?"

"Oh no.... You said you were looking for someone. I should have realized...." Napstablook glanced toward a doorway. "Everyone's by the king's old house. It's been standing empty so long that the kids in the Ruins have started to think it's haunted.... I heard that a loox child went in on a dare and opened that door to the rest of the Underground that's been locked forever.... Everyone went to meet the sentries from Snowdin there.... If you're looking for someone, they're probably outside that old house...."

As Napstablook faded away, Frisk said her thank yous.

She continued on through the rest of the empty ruins, but now that she knew why they were empty, the felt a little less so. Well, other than the emptiness brought by a nagging feeling about Toriel. Her house couldn't have just been standing empty long enough for monster children to think it was haunted. Was it Flowey? The aliens? But neither of them made sense, because whatever happened, it had to have happened long before this last reset.

She really had to find Sans. She picked up her pace, and in the second-to-last room of the puzzle before Toriel's house, she found him. He was bent down by one of the levers, peering through a hole in the loose dirt there. "Old lady? Toriel? Come on, you gotta be somewhere. Please.

"Sans!" Frisk ran over to him. "Sans, I'm really sorry to introduce myself with a code word two runs in a row, but we have a really big emergency, and everything's _wrong._ My name is Frisk, and my mama is a puking toilet."

Sans got to his feet. "Your mama is a puking toilet? Heh heh heh. That is a really immature thing to say, and it's not the code word for being a time-traveling adult. Whoever told you that is a big fat liar. But anyway, ya sure you're twenty-five?" He winked. "You look more eighteen to me. I might need to check your driver's license again."

Frisk spluttered and blushed. "I thought you said you couldn't remember resets."

"Not normally, no, but my hand was on that reset button too, remember? At least, I'm hoping that's why I can remember the last run this time." Sans's eyes flicked to the next door. "'Cause you're right: something is really wrong here. I don't suppose you've seen Toriel anywhere?"

She shook her head. "She was supposed to greet me where I fell, and I still can't load or reset on my own. However we mess up trying to save everyone, it's going to be permanent...."

She choked. Whatever they did to mess up might be permanent, but whatever they did to help wouldn't be, would it? Anyone else's resets could undo their efforts.

"Come here." Sans held his arms out, and Frisk accepted his embrace. His sweater was thick, his hug was gentle, and Frisk set her head down on his collarbone. As he held her, he whispered, "Better than one of Green's hugs?"

Despite herself, Frisk giggled.

When Sans pulled away, he held out his hand, which Frisk took. He lead them toward the shadow of the room's white column. "Get ready. We're gonna take a shortcut."

Pop!

They arrived in Sans's living room, and Sans lead the way to the lumpy couch. He sat down with Frisk. "You okay? What ya gonna do now?"

She hung her head. "I know I've got to stay determined, but how are we supposed to fight something like this?"

Frisk regretted her words the moment they left her lips. After all, weren't the resets and their accompanying memory wipes what Sans had been struggling with all along? To make matters worse, while the person who had the right to cry here was Sans, it was her cheeks being wetted by fresh tears.

She didn't even need to look at Sans to know that his eye sockets were darkening. Why wouldn't they be? He was upset beyond the point where all that happened was his eye lights going out: he was leaning close enough to her that she could feel on her cheek that his breath had gone freezing again.

"Come here." Sans took Frisk into another hug and leaned back into the couch. "I ever tell you how I was going to deal with an anomaly like you?"

Frisk took a breath of Sans's jacket. It smelled like ketchup, grease, and naps at a wooden sentry station. "You told me you gave up."

"Yeah, I gave up. I gave up trying, and I gave up hope. Mostly." He wiped Frisk's tears with a bony hand. "I couldn't have given up hope entirely. Monster souls need hope to exist, you know. Our chemists could say it's a _soulible_ material."

Frisk wrapped her arms around Sans in return for his joke.

"Point is, if I'd given up all hope, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. I thought it was a long shot that things would turn out alright, but I still had some hope, so I went looking for you. At the time, I'd hoped that if I could just help you be happy with time as it was, you'd stop resetting. Imagine how it felt when it turned out that you were friendly, you were just trying to save everyone, you said you'd let me help you, and then we were out of the Underground, meeting all your human friends. Yellow insisted I was one of the team, Orange cared so strongly about my health that she helped me make a plan to get my stamina up on the way to Area 51, and Green, Blue, and Cyan were starting to work on a way to get monsters integrated into the surface world. All of you helped me get some of my hope back, and I want to do the same for you and your determination. So, yeah, I know how this feels, but you can't give up either, okay?" Sans tilted Frisk's head to look at him. His eye lights were still gone, but his eyelids were half-closed in some expression Frisk didn't know. What was this?

Frisk wanted to assure Sans that she wasn't going anywhere, but her eyes fell to Papyrus's well-vacuumed carpet and wouldn't get up. Still, she took a breath. "I won't give up, but I really need your help. What were you going to do if I wasn't friendly?"

Frisk could have cut the silence with a knife.

Bad cliché. It brought back memories of finding that shapeshifting _thing_ facing Sans down with a knife. He'd killed the alien, its body dissolved to nothing, to not even dust, and then....

_"Heya. You look frustrated about something. Guess I'm pretty good at my job, huh?"_

...and then he saw her, and he thought she'd loaded to come at him again. Whatever his answer to an unfriendly time traveler was, it had to involve the fighting he'd done.

"It's okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me. We've just got to find out who reset us back to the meeting with all the Souls and why, and then we've got to find a way to make this not end with everyone dead."

She'd never admit it to Sans, but she wished she had her powers back. If she could just _make_ things go right, it would be easier not to give up and die on him - not that she would give up - and she was sure he'd like to see her get all her determination back, but it wasn't as though Sans wanted the resets back along with it, was it. She didn't want to scare him anyway with the possibility of another forgotten timeline like what she'd just experienced for herself.

Sans set Frisk against an arm of the couch and got to his feet. "Wait here. I've just got to get a key, and then I've got something to show ya."

Was the key the one to his secret lab? Well, if his lab was where he got his timeline reports from, then it wouldn't hurt to look over them while they looked at whatever it was he wanted to show her. If it wasn't the reports themselves.

He was back in under a minute, and, sure enough, he took Frisk out around the house and into his lab. He stooped down by the far cabinets, the ones under the indecipherable blueprints, and undid a lock. From inside, he pulled out an old black binder whose spine was bending in at its edges. "That time traveler I mentioned? These are his notes."

Sans dropped the notes atop the blueprints.

Frisk blinked at them.

Sans had his eyes on her face, but he looked away when Frisk caught him looking.

"This means a lot to you, I can tell." Politely, Frisk flipped through the binder, which had notes typed up in a nonsense font she couldn't read, equally opaque charts, and occassional pages with photos of Sans, Papyrus, or other monsters with crosses over their face or arrows pointing at them from some handwritten note or other. She wasn't sure why Sans thought now was the best time to share this - surely, he remembered that there was an alien on its way toward Mount Ebott? - but it seemed rude to ask.

"They're my dad's notes." Sans was checking Frisk out again, and this time, he didn't look away when she caught him.

Frisk rested her hand on a photo which had Papyrus, who had his face crossed out, and Sans, who had some sort of comment on the page. "If you got your brilliance from your dad, them I'm sure there's something in his notes that can help us."

Blushing, Sans turned his head toward the wall. "Aw, well, I wish. All they can do is tell us what to expect as we get closer to all time and space ending. If you're not the one resetting anymore, I don't know if whoever it is even knows that the end of the universe is a possibility, but we've got to keep an eye on things so that if we find them, we can warn them how close they are to destroying everything."

" _When_ Sans, _when_ we find them." Frisk closed the binder and handed it back to Sans. "I thought it might be the aliens, and then I got back here and found someone else messing around with time. I was hoping those reports of yours could tell us who it is we're looking for."

"'Fraid not. They're not detailed enough for that." Sans placed the notes back in the cabinet and locked up. "Anyway, _lab_ me show you something else."

If they couldn't check whether it was the aliens or Flowey through the lab reports, then how could they? Or would Frisk just have to make assumptions about who was responsible for the reset?

Sans set a photo album on the counter. He opened it up to the back cover and pulled out a photo of three people as well: a skeleton with a beaded black choker and a pair of flared jeans was holding a babybones, and a skeleton child that could have been Sans was standing in front of them, wearing an adult-sized lab coat and showing off a lanyard that said _Junior Royal Scientist._

"Is that you?"

"Yeah. Guess I wanted to be just like my old man when I grew up. Heh." Sans closed the album and set the photo on top. "Anyway, notice anything strange about this picture?"

Frisk looked. On closer examination, the skeleton with the choker was not holding the baby, but the baby was floating as though being held by an invisible person next to the adult skeleton. "Was Papyrus using magic already?"

"I mean he was, but Mom wouldn't have left a baby to support himself with magic long enough for a photo. Besides, she's leaning into something, isn't she?"

She was. Frisk glanced at Sans.

His eyes were still on the photo. "Dad must have been standing there, but he's not even a memory anymore. Couldn't say how Green's heard of him, even if monsters had been free this whole time." Sans glanced toward the cabinet in which he'd placed his father's binder. "Only reason I know about him is because I found the notes.... And now, the same thing is happening again...."

Frisk could have been imagining things, but the lights in Sans's eyes seemed to dull. He seemed lost in thought, and Frisk would have let him have as long as he needed if not for the shape-shifter who was going to come and start killing monsters in no more than a few days' time. "Sans?"

Sans put the photo back in the album and started thumbing one of the album's sleeveless pages. "Time is a bit like a piece of paper. You can make a crease once, and you might be able to do something useful with that crease, as though you were making origami. But if you just keep foldin' it in the same place-" Sans did just that with the page's corner. It frayed. "It starts to tear. It's still attached to the rest of the sheet, but something's gone wrong. And eventually-" Sans folded the corner until it tore off entirely. "-everything's gone."

He tossed the torn-off corner into a bin next to the busted machine before leaning against the counter.

Frisk leaned against the counter next to him. "Did something happen to your dad because of time travel?"

"As I read his notes, I swore to myself that I'd never lose anyone else that way." There was a light scraping as Sans dug his fingers into the lip of the counter. "Dad mentions me a lot in his notes. We seem close, but he slowly loses his mind to his time travel, and by the time that time's broken enough that I can remember enough of the resets to try to help, he's already accustomed resetting. I imagine the version of me in those timelines was feeling as powerless as I do to stop anything if a time traveler won't stop themselves. His notes go on with newer weird stuff coming along the more he resets. Even before Dad disappears for good, he reports several timelines where I seem to know that I knew him somehow, but I have no idea who he is. My own dad." Sans closed his eyes.

Frisk had never heard this before, and she had the feeling that he'd never told anyone everything before. She scooted closer until there was only a few inches of counter left between her and him.

Sans glanced at her, as though to thank her. He took a breath. "All the weird stuff gets more frequent the closer it got to everything ending. My not recognizing dad isn't the only weird thing either. One time, Papyrus and I have gone missing, and Dad is the only one who remembers us, and he realizes that if he keeps messing around with that time machine-" Sans nodded toward the broken machine. "Well, he realizes that if he keeps messing around with time, then time is going to stop existing. It's in his reports. He says he has an idea to bring me and Papyrus back and stop all the weird things from happening for good, and that's his last entry. Frisk, I'm sorry I asked you for this reset. I don't think I should have."

"Toriel. You're blaming yourself for her disappearance, but she'd still be dead with everyone else anyway if we hadn't reset. It's really not your fault." Frisk got off the counter. "We'll find a way to help her."

She had to fix this. She had to.... How could she? It sounded like Sans's father brought the brothers back with a reset or something, but she didn't have a way to do that at the moment.

"When I was talking to the rest of the sentries in the Ruins, they still seemed to remember who Toriel is, so I'm hoping she'll turn up. People usually turned up eventually if they weren't so far gone that no one remembered them, but yeah." Sans stared at the floor. "It's probably past time for you to know, but I didn't know how to talk to a kid about this. I'd thought a child wouldn't understand why they couldn't just fix things by continuing to reset. I'm sorry."

"How do we-"

"We can't. Any more resets even close to this time are just going to break time further. We might get her back. We might not. Other people might go missing instead." Sans too pushed himself away from the counter.

"You're the one who told me to stay determined."

Sans put the photo album back in its cabinet. "Yeah, but only 'cause you're literally made out of determination. Lose enough of it, and you die. I don't want you resetting if we can help it. Didn't I just say I don't want to lose anyone else to time travel? I really don't want to forget who you are again either. It's almost the same thing as you being gone, and if I didn't know that you'd been resetting to before I met you, it would feel like it was my fault that I was forgettin' ya, you know?"

Frisk's stomach churned. It never would have been Sans's fault. It was hers. She'd made him forget, and how many times had she had to reintroduce herself to him? "Your code words."

"Yup. I mean, it's still upsetting if I have to hear them, but I'm glad I made them. I have one general code word for time travelers, and a whole bunch of others for who a time traveler is to me. Papyrus helped me list out all the people someone could be to me. He's the coolest."

"He is." Frisk and Sans gazed at each other a moment. "Sans, what does _my mama is a puking toilet_ meant to you?"

He blushed. "It's for a crush." Sans stuck his hands in his pockets and hurried to the door. "If ya still wanted to check those reports, Alphys has 'em. We should probably ask for her help with other things anyway. Ya comin?"


End file.
